I Can't Quit You, Baby
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: Sequel to “Born Under A Bad Sign.” Fatal attraction? You bet. Coming out of retirement? Why not! Can Sally and Eddie ever quit each other? No way.
1. The Postman Always Rings Twice

**I CAN'T QUIT YOU, BABY**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Watchmen, and I make no profit from writing this story.**

**Chapter One: The Postman Always Rings Twice**

**New York City, Summer, 1960**

**I: Sally**

Sally had known for years that she needed Larry like she needed a hole in the head, but it had taken her longer than she thought it would to shed him, completely, but now, with the divorce final, the settlement concluded, and the temporary alimony period up, she never had to so much as think about him ever again.

She supposed, in the end, she kept him around as a father figure to Laurie, but Laurie had figured out Larry wasn't remotely related to her by the time she was about five and she seemed a lot happier without him being around.

It also meant Sally didn't have to spend so much time sneaking around; if she wanted to go out with a man, she could do it, and she did do it, and without shame.

Laurie had enough ashamed of her mother for both of them.

As for Sally, she and shame had parted ways 11 years ago, one afternoon with that SOB Eddie Blake.

She wished she could get him out of her life as easily as she got rid of Larry, but it wasn't possible to wash Eddie out of her hair.

It was crazy, but in a way, it was thanks to Eddie that she had the life she did.

Before she had Laurie, she was well on her way to becoming the kind of blowsy old drunk that the _New York Post_ had a field day with.

1948 had been a real bad year. She'd gotten drunk every day, slept with at least three strangers a week; her life was really going down the drain and she didn't know what to do to stop it.

Moreover, she hadn't cared.

But when she had her daughter, a child she loved who was the child of, well, a man she loved, it gave her something to fashion the second half of her life after.

She got rid of the apartment and bought a brownstone; she was writing her memoirs; she had spent the last eleven years raising Laurie and training her, and other young female masks.

It was a good second act to a life as a superhero.

But she was always trying not to think about Eddie, but that could be hard, considering that she lived with a little bit of him.

Laurie looked like her, except she had Eddie's dark hair and dark eyes, and she had his bad temper.

Sally had a bad temper of her own, but Laurie didn't have any old bad temper, she had Eddie's temper, where she could go from a normal mood into a towering rage in seconds, over nothing.

And she was just a little girl, yet, but no doubt about it, she was Eddie Blake's little girl.

This and that about her daughter, little things that reminded Sally every day that there was something between here and that shanty Mick bastard that would never go away.

Sally didn't have any family left, and she had been an only child, but Eddie had family coming out of his ears.

Laurie's family, too.

She didn't know they were her family, but still, Sally tried to make up for it.

Since she was a baby, Sally had been taking Laurie to play in the same park in Bensonhurst where Eddie's sister, Edie, took her sons, Paulie and Patrick, to play.

Paulie, at least, spent a lot of time at her place on Central Park West; they had a way of hiding themselves in the park so you'd take hours to fine them.

Them and Liv Napier.

Laurie and Paulie and Liv, the Three Musketeers.

Sally had hired Edie Blake to be her cleaning lady; Edie was pretty much cleaning lady to the mask community. And if she had to go out at night, she asked Edie Blake to come over and watch Laurie for her.

As unlikely as it was; they had become close friends.

Edie was someone Sally knew she could trust.

At least, Laurie had some contact with her family that way.

Her little superhero trainee charge Liv Napier, Bruce Wayne's red-haired stepchild played in the same park; she used to come there with her mother before her mother died, and then she used to come with Edie Blake or Madge McClatchey, before her father got out of Arkham, and Bruce Wayne adopted Liv.

Liv and Paulie were already friends; they were in the same class in school; Bruce thought it best not to uproot Liv from her friends when he adopted her, after her parentage came to light.

They were like three of a kind.

They may have been outcasts, but they didn't care, so the three of them, who were all the same age, became the best of friends.

On occasion, Eddie brought Paulie to the park, himself.

You could just tell that Paulie idolised his Uncle Eddie.

He was like a second father to Paulie, who was the spitting image of him, the way Eddie and Edie were the spitting image of their father.

Laurie never took any special notice of him; he was just Crazy Paulie's uncle.

Eddie.

She'd made a good try of it, staying away from him.

After Laurie was born, she took her to see her father, when she was just a baby, and Sally spent the next ten years thinking about how Eddie looked as happy and as normal as any man with his baby daughter in his arms, and then she took her away from him.

Right there, in this very park; when she remembered the way Laurie had instinctively held onto his coat, and the look on Eddie's face as he turned away from her; it still brought tears to Sally's eyes.

It was hard for her to do, but Sally had to keep reminding herself of Eddie's bad side, which was very, very bad.

Sally loved to hate him, and hated to love him, and there had been times she'd talked to him on the telephone, and a few times they'd met in passing, and those occasional days in the park, but as long as she was married to Larry, she made sure there was nothing between them.

But she wasn't married to Larry, anymore.

And Larry hadn't lived with her and Laurie for two years.

Now, Laurie didn't take much notice of her mother's boyfriends, whom she might see, on occasion, around the house in the morning.

Sally still wasn't much for long-term relationships with men, and she didn't think much of women who paraded their lovers in front of their kids, making the kid call the guy uncle, or anything like that, so if she saw Eddie there a couple of times and Sally couldn't get him out the door before Laurie woke up, what would she know?

All Eddie was to her was her friend Paulie's uncle.

She didn't even know he was a mask, like her mother.

She was sitting at home, lost in her thoughts when the telephone rang.

"Sally?"

It was Aggie Blake, and she sounded upset.

Sally could hear Paulie's and Laurie's voices panicky and tearful, murmuring in the background, and Eddie shouting.

"What the hell is going on?"

"The kids got into a fight with some teenage boy in the park. Something about him trying to sell drugs. He attacked them. With a knife. Beat the hell out of Laurie and Paulie and they said he stabbed Liv. She hit him with a brick and ran away. Nobody knows where Liv is; they're all terrified the police are going to get them. Eddie's gonna go look for Liv. You'd better come over."

Sally didn't think twice, she put her costume on, and put a raincoat on over it, hailed a cab, and went to Bensonhurst.

***

There was a Rolls out on the street when she got there, and she found Bruce Wayne in his thousand dollar suit and his camel hair overcoat, in the Blake kitchen, looking for his stepdaughter, and Laurie and Paulie were at the table.

Edie had probably patched them up; Aggie couldn't stand the sight of blood.

Sally could see neither of them were hurt badly.

Unlike poor little Liv.

Eddie came up from the basement in his undershirt, it was a cold day, but he was wearing his undershirt because he had Liv Napier in his arms, wrapped in his shirt.

You could see where there was blood on her chest and dripping down her legs, and she hung onto Eddie, but she wasn't crying; she was pretty fucking rational for a little girl with some big holes in her when he handed her over to her stepfather.

"I'm tough, Sal. I can take it. I'll be back to trainin' in a week." Liv promised.

Bruce was going to take Liv to the hospital and she heard Eddie promise he would take care of this punk kid.

Sally got up.

"Laurie, you stay here with Edie and Paulie. I have work to do."

"No way! He hurt my friend! We're gonna kill that kid! Right, Paulie?" Laurie insisted.

"You mean, really kill him?" Paulie asked.

Laurie sprung up and got a kitchen knife out of the butcher block on the counter.

"I mean kill him till he's dead!" she replied.

Eddie took the knife from her.

"You're too little for that, kiddo. Wait till you get older, an' youse is a mask like your Ma, then you can go kill badguys."

"Well who's gonna do it? You? Ma?"

"That's right. Me and your Ma. Kill him till he's dead."

Sally wanted to tell him that was nothing he should be saying to a little girl, but, it seemed to pacify Laurie, and she sat down, with Paulie and Edie.

_That's his bad blood in her, screaming for vengeance._

Sally pushed the almost biblical thought from her mind and she followed Eddie out to his car.

She watched him get a bag out of his trunk that she figured had his costume in it; he went around the side of the house and came out in his costume.

Sally took off her overcoat.

"Hey, Sal, I meant what I told Laurie. I'm not takin' this guy to the authorities."

"You think I got a problem with that, Eddie?"

They walked over to the park, where Mickey Blake, Eddie's youngest brother, now a cop in his old neighbourhood, and his partner were detaining the punk in question.

"Here he is now. The nice man we told you about who doesn't like punks that push dope to children and beat up little girls. And this is his friend. They've been waiting to meet you," the other cop said.

"No! No, don't turn me over to him! To her, either! I got rights! No! No, don't!"

"You stabbed my student, and beat up my little girl. You ain't got shit, asshole." Sally told him.

The older policeman, an Italian guy, shoved the punk kid towards Eddie and Sally and got in the cop car.

"Come on, Mickey. We're done here. Let's go have lunch."

"Sounds good to me, Al." Mickey said.

The police car drove away.

"What are you two gonna to do me?"

"Us? Nothin'. But, that girl you stabbed? That was Jack Napier's daughter. An' I can't say what he's gonna do to you, but trust me, when he's done, you're gonna wish it had been me and not him."

The punk made a lot of noise, and Eddie didn't want to hear it, so he cracked the asshole in the head, again, and threw him in the trunk.

He was still making noise, so Sally gave him another smack, and that knocked him out.

They got in the car and drove down to the docks, to make a delivery to Jack Napier.

Sally waited in the car while Eddie went to see his old friend.

When he came out, they just sat there in the car for awhile, the loneliest part of the docks all around them.

"If something's going on, Eddie, I want to know about it."

"It's my problem, Sal. It's my old neighbourhood, I'll take care of it. Jesus Christ. Stabbin' kids and pushin' dope to babies in the park. These fuckin' punks aren't gonna get away with it. I got Jack on the case. He's gonna give me the lowdown on these small-time cocksuckers, and I'm gonna make goddamn sure that my fuckin' neighbourhood doesn't go down the tubes like this whole crazy fuckin' city. You're retired, Sal."

"Fuck you, Eddie, I'm not that retired! My kid spends a lot of time in that neighbourhood. The costume still fits me, doesn't it? I train these kids, it keeps me in shape. And don't tell me how shit is gonna get rough. I know shit is gonna get rough. I want in, goddamn you."

"Yeah. Me too. Especially considerin' how that costume still fits you."

"Will you think with the big head for a minute, Eddie? Are you lettin' me in on this or not?"

"Yeah, Sal, sure. Sure I am. Of course. What am I gonna tellya? No?"

"You bet your ass you're not! I'm in better fucking shape than I was ten years ago. I been drinking a helluva lot less and working a helluva lot harder."

"Yeah, I know. I saw that one-handed fuck flick you just made for the dirty raincoat brigade. You know, the sequel to your last movie. An' I still don't see any fuckin' cellulite." Eddie chuckled.

"It was not a one-handed fuck flick! It was an art film! It did much better in Europe."

"Uh-huh. _Silk Swingers in Paris_. Real artistic. Showin' the whole world your tits."

"Fuck you, Eddie! You know what? Fuck you! I been showin' the whole world my tits since I was seventeen! I didn't fuck anybody on camera, it wasn't a fuck flick. I did more as part of my act on 42nd Street than I did in that movie!"

"Ya did?"

"Yeah. I did. But I never fucked anybody onstage, either."

"Wudja do?"

"Just drive the fuckin' car, willya, Eddie?"

"That's not fair, Sal. If you can blow some Frog in a Halloween mask under Vaseline lighting, why get all puritanical on me, now?"

That did it.

Sally raised her hand to slap him in the face and Eddie got hold of her wrist, and got close enough to kiss her.

Her ears started ringing like a fire alarm, but she shoved him away.

Half-heartedly.

"You shanty Mick cocksucker, I didn't do any such thing in that goddamn movie!"

"I know, Sal. I've seen it ten times. Yunno the part where they're playin the bad jazz and they got the funny lights on youse and the camera doin' weird shit while you're lyin there on the bed in that silk and fishnet job, thrashin' around like you're havin' a wet dream? That's the part I get off on. One of these days, before the show closes, the usher is gonna catch me jackin' off in the back of the movie theatre, but I don't give a shit."

Well, it wasn't exactly sweet nothings, but, what the hell?

No use closing the barn door eleven years after the horse got out.

They both opened the front doors of the Coupe DeVille, got out, got in the back, and slammed the doors shut.

Her costume was easy to get off, Eddie's, not so much so, they were both working on the straps of the armor and Eddie had just got it off when a very small part of Sally's powers of reasoning kicked in.

"Hey, Romeo, wait a fuckin' second. I already got one kid, I don't need two." She told him.

"I got rubbers in the glove compartment."

"You would."

He put his armor on the front seat, and his shirt, and got in the back, dropping a fistful of rubbers on the floor.

Sally had unlaced her corset and when Eddie got back in the car, he pulled it and the top of her costume down so that her breasts popped out of the top.

"I always wanted to do this." He told her.

"I know. That's why I didn't unsnap my garters."

In one part of her mind, Sally had to ask herself what the hell she was doing, in the back of Eddie's car on the docks someplace, with the polluted smell of the dirtiest part of the East River seeping in through every crack in every door and window, taking off Eddie's gunbelt and unzipping his black leather pants while he made short work of her underwear.

That, however, was not as important as the feeling that went through her when his hand touched her bare thigh above her stockings to unsnap her stockings from her garters just as his lips closed around her nipple.

They didn't even take their boots off; she didn't even pull his pants down; they were tight enough they were like a second skin, and she really had him going, she could tell by the way his hands were shaking as he tried to get the Trojan packet open.

"Gimme that! Jesus Christ, Eddie."

Sally opened it; she put it on him.

He seemed to like that.

"You got a lot of experience doin' that, I can tell."

"Shut up and kiss me."

Sally wasn't thinking if anybody was coming around, she wasn't thinking about how it would look if somebody did; she wasn't thinking hardly at all, and what she was thinking was hardly romantic.

She was thinking that eleven years was too long since the last time she got her legs around that son-of-a-bitch Eddie Blake, and then, she wasn't thinking anything at all.

***

Sally sat up in the back seat and pulled her nylons on, rubbing the back of her head.

"Ya smacked my head off the goddamn window, ya know." She said.

"Yeah? Well you scratched me up like a fuckin' alley cat. Here. Put this in your purse. A little somethin' to remember me by."

Sally swore, opened the window and tossed the used rubber out, amid Eddie laughing at his own joke.

"Real funny, Eddie. We're lucky the goddam thing didn't break. You wanna go and check if any of your tires are flat?"

"Hey, you was the one screamin' in my ear that ya wanted more. Goddam, I don't feel like I got no more. I can't move off this seat."

"Me neither. Gimme one of those cigars. I got no place to put my smokes in this getup."

***

They put themselves back together the best they could, Eddie put his street clothes back on and Sally buttoned her overcoat over her costume.

On the way back to Bensonhurst, Sally was quiet.

She wasn't sorry for what she'd just done; but she couldn't believe she'd done it.

"So, I heard your divorce is final." Eddie finally said.

"Yeah. It is."

"So, does that take me offa red and put me onto yellow?"

"You fuckin' bastard, ya never give up, do ya, Eddie?"

"Why should I? Look, I kept my distance while you was married, didn't I? And while you was gettin' a divorce. An' raisin' our kid. I never made no claims on her. I coulda. But, ya know, Sal, after this, they grow up fast. I know. I raised four of 'em. In two years, she'll be 13, and she'll start kickin' in the stall, an' you'll hafta be tellin' her all about boys an' rubbers an' shit, an' in five or six she'll be workin' or goin' to college, or gettin' serious about some asshole guy you'd like to kill, an' outa the house, soon enough. Whatta you gonna do then? Take up knittin'? You remember tellin' me you ain't the marryin' kind? Me neither. Ya like to run around with some a your admirers, ya don't want some guy hangin' round ya house, lookin' for you ta be Harriet to his Ozzie, right? Ya don't want nobody cozyin' up to Laurie, playin Daddy with all that Uncle shit, an' if a guy comes over ta see ya, youse want him there after the kid goes to bed and gone before she wakes up. I can do that. I won't hang around. I'm her father, for Chrissake. I got her best interests at heart. An' I can see she's already too much like me without me around, bein' a bad example."

The way he said it, it sounded like a good idea.

And, when Laurie got a little older, and God forbid, started to carry on like her parents had, if might be good to have Eddie around to discourage some of the more asshole of the asshole boyfriends.

And, when I get a little older, and I'm still carrying on like I did when I was 16, it'll be good to have Eddie around.

"Well, it ain't like I can tell you I'm not interested." Sally replied.

"Willya think about it?"

"Maybe."

"Hey, ya wanna go out an celebrate hackin' off the ol' ball an' chain? Friday night, maybe? Edie'll watch the kid."

Sally thought about his offer

There was no harm in that.

Going to the movies with an old friend.

"So, ya wanna go out?"

"Sure, Eddie. I ain't had a night out for a long time."

"I'll pick youse up around eight, then."

"You know where I live?"

"How?"

"Sal, c'mon, I'm a Level 10 S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent. Ya think I don't know where my own kid lives?"

They were in front of the house in Bensonhurst.

Paulie and Laurie were in the front yard, they ran over to the fence when the car pulled up, opened the gate, and got in the back.

Which made Sally glad she insisted on cleaning up the car.

"Ma said you would take us to the hospital to see Liv. They went to Brooklyn General." Paulie told him.

Paulie looked around in the back seat.

"If you killed that guy, shouldn't there be a lot of blood?" Paulie asked.

"Don't you pay attention at the movies? Whenya kill somebody, you wrap him up an' stick him in the trunk. Then you dump him in the river." Laurie told him.

"Oh yeah. Right."

***

They got to the hospital in time to see Liv walking out the door holding her stepfather's hand.

She tried to move the bandages on her chest and her legs to show Laurie and Paulie her stitches, but Bruce Wayne stopped her.

Liv was pretty mad that she had to go home and rest, and Sally decided Laurie was coming home with her.

Eddie dropped Sally and Laurie off at Sally's brownstone on Central Park West; he knew the way like he could have driven it blindfolded.

"Jeeeziz, Laurie, when I don't come over for awhile, I forget how loaded your Ma is." Paulie said.

"You gotta point there, Paulie. Nice joint, Sal." Eddie said.

"Thanks."

"Paulie, quit bouncin' around back there! I ain't gonna let youse out so you can go hide from me in fuckin' Central Park and I gotta walk around all day lookin' for youse."

"But I don't wanna go home. We're havin' the Old Man's favourite dinner, an' I can't stand that weird Russian food!"

"Alright, so I'll take youse to the movies."

"And to Grossmann's? C'mon, Uncle Eddie, I almost got killed today."

"You almost get killed every Monday?"

"No. But every Monday they gotta eat that weird food. It's really sick."

Sally said goodbye and walked with Laurie into the house before she could ask to go too.

"Ma, why'd you do that? I wanted to go, too!"

"You got beat up today. You're going to bed early."

"Jeez, Ma, it's just Paulie's uncle. He's not gonna drop me on my head, or anythin'."

"I still want you home with me, tonight, and I don't want to hear anything more about it, Laurel Jane!"

Laurie turned out to be more tired than she'd thought. She had just a bowl of Campbell's chicken noodle soup for dinner and then went straight to bed.

Sally was up for most of the night, thinking about everything that happened that day.

In the end, the only was she could go to sleep was to remind herself, well, he's just Paulie's uncle.

Keep it that way.


	2. Kiss Me, Deadly

**Chapter Two: Kiss Me, Deadly**

**Grossmann's Delicatessen, Friday**

**I: Sally**

"So, I guess I'm thinking about hanging up my tights, too, when I retire from the force. Moe's is still there; I was thinking about buying it. It's funny, Sally. I used to think that when you were in your forties, well, that was as old as old could get. Now I feel like I've got a whole other life ahead of me. You know what I mean?"

"I sure do, Hollis. I mean, you work, and you make your mark, and you sacrifice, and then you come to a point where ya gotta say, hey, what about what I want? What about my life?"

Sally suddenly realised that even though she and Hollis were talking about completely different things, he thought they were talking about the same thing.

She suddenly felt extremely guilty, sitting there with Hollis Mason.

Guilty that she was having lunch with Hollis and that he was probably trying to think of a way to ask her to marry him, and she was sitting there thinking about Eddie Blake's cock.

That was literally what she was thinking about.

Ever since that quickie in the car, she couldn't think about much else.

And Hollis was a good, decent, handsome man. He wanted to offer her a chance at a good, decent, normal life. He would make a wonderful stepfather for Laurie and he would be a good husband to any woman.

Yeah.

Any woman but her.

Hollis wasn't exactly Errol Flynn when he was a young man, and now that he was in his forties, he was the type who probably didn't put too high a premium on fucking.

Sally knew that she could live without a lot of things, but sex wasn't one of them, and Hollis probably didn't know what an open relationship was, and if he had, she was pretty sure the very concept would horrify him.

Not that Sally was guilty about it; she was just guilty that Eddie was the one she was thinking about in connection with it.

"So, where's Laurie, today? I was looking forward to seeing her."

"Well, you heard about what happened to Liv Napier, didn't you?"

Hollis frowned.

"Horrible! What's the world coming to, when kids can't even play in a park without being attacked by crazies and drug peddlers! Still, that's the Comedian's old neighbourhood. I'm sure he'll clean it up."

"Not alone, Hollis."

"But Sally, are you sure you're up to it?"

"You bet your ass I am! My daughter spends a lot of time in that park. She's probably there right now, or at Edie and Aggie Blake's house."

Hollis frowned.

"I don't know, Sally. I've got nothing against the Blake sisters, and I've met Mickey Blake, he's an honest cop, but don't you think that's a little too close for comfort?"

"Hollis, they're Laurie's family. Even if she doesn't know it, now, if she finds out someday, at least she'll have her family. It'll soften the blow. They're good people. They can't help it Eddie's their brother."

"How is your little trainee?" Hollis asked, changing the subject.

"Liv? She went over the wall at Wayne Manor, made her way all the way to my place from out on Long Island and showed up for training, two days after she got stabbed. I drove her home. She came back the next day. One thing about Liv, she's smart and she's determined."

"Determined not to follow in her father's footsteps, either. That's good."

"Speaking of determined, I have to go pick Laurie up. It was nice seeing you, Hollis. If you come over on Monday for lunch, both of the girls will be there."

"And I can talk to Liv about engines. You know, I don't think she's going to outgrow her passion for all things mechanical. That girl was born with a screwdriver in her hand. She'll probably become some kind of genius engineer by the time she's 19. Another little Tony Stark."

"Probably."

Actually, Laurie was going to be at the Blake house overnight, because Sally was going out to dinner with her father.

When she thought of it that way, it didn't seem so bad.

Eddie said something about the movies, so Sally didn't get too dressed up.

She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that even though she had no shortage of boyfriends in the past 11 years, she had never stopped thinking about him.

She and Eddie went to the movies and someplace for dinner and he wasn't too happy when she thanked him for a lovely evening and sent him on his way, but he left.

It was a small victory, but a victory, nonetheless.

She had proved to herself that Eddie could be just Paulie's uncle.

Just her old friend.

***

Two nights later, Sally was sitting in her living room, watching TV, when the phone rang.

It was late, around eleven, so she wasn't surprised when it turned out to be business.

She had been expecting it when Edie said that she wanted to have Laurie overnight, something about taking the kids to the big drive-in on the other side of the tunnel in Jersey.

"Hiya Sal. You remember that project we were talkin' about, that day Laurie got hurt in the park?"

"Yeah. I do. Are we startin'?"

"Tonight. The back door to the house is open. Come in quietly, they're all out at the drive-in. They went to Jersey. I'm in the basement."

He hung up.

Sally went upstairs, put her costume on, hid a .9mm auto in one half of her bustier and a knife in the other, then went downstairs, put on her overcoat and left the house.

Sally got in her car, and drove to Bensonhurst.

***

Eddie was sitting in front of a card table.

There was a map on it, a bottle of Irish whiskey, and an ashtray.

Sally sat down opposite him, lit up, had a drink, and looked at the map.

"So, what's their game?"

"They ain't got much. Jack told me these assholes ain't connected to shit, and I checked it out. They're a bunch of punks the wiseguys didn't want. The kid Jack got rid of, he was the gang leader's little brother. There's another brother, and they got ten guys. They sell reefers and skag, an' they run a few girls. Jailbait. Get 'em hooked on the needle and turn 'em out. They ain't neighbourhood girls, at least. They work from here, to my block, and the next block over, an' the park. At night, they run the drugs out of the park, and the girls outa this pizza shop, right here. It's pretty small time, shouldn't take much to stop 'em."

"So, what's your plan, Eddie?"

"Well, I was thinkin' we start by lettin' 'em know we're around. You ready for a little action, Sal?"

The way he said it, Sally could tell he wasn't just talking about work.

"Business before pleasure, Eddie."

***

Sally wasn't nervous, walking down the dark street with Eddie at one in the morning, even though she hadn't seen action in a little over a decade.

In fact, she was excited.

It always made her a little sad, thinking of how she was preparing Laurie and Liv to go out there and fight with the best of the big boys, like she used to.

But now, here she was, doing her job, again.

"Is this the place?"

"Yeah."

"May I?"

"Hey, ladies first." Eddie told her.

_WHAM!_

Sally kicked the door in.

Damn, that felt good.

It was just like the old days.

A smoky room fully of greasy punks, drunk, high on their own supply, huddled around a card table piled up with paltry amounts of money and broken-down pawnshop guns.

"What the fuck is this?" one of them demanded.

"Just a visit from your friendly neighbourhood masks. I'm gonna ask you punks, nicely, to pack up your shit and get the fuck out and never come back. It'd be real good for your health if you agreed." Sally announced.

One of them swaggered up to her, trying to look real tough with his greasy DA and his cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his undershirt.

He flicked a switchblade.

"You think we're gonna listen to some old bag like you? Whatta you gonna do? Shove me between your tits and suffocate me?"

Sally sized him up while he was flapping his jaws, and when he was done, she grabbed him by the arm with the knife in it, twisted it, and threw a left to his unprotected jaw.

He dropped the knife, she kicked it away and followed up with a right to the solar plexus.

The punk went down, and Sally kicked him over onto his back, and put her boot on his neck.

"Show some respect for your elders, sonny." She told him.

Eddie was just standing by, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and one foot on the wall behind him.

"Are you busy?" she asked.

"Like I said, ladies first."

"Who else wants some? Ah, ah, ah, don't touch those guns, kids."

Sally pulled the gun out of the holster in her bustier.

"This ain't no pea shooter like you got there, and it's loaded. Now, are you gonna listen to me or are you really gonna get hurt?"

The only one of them who wasn't wearing jeans and an undershirt slammed his fist on the table, got up, straightened his jacket, and started to make a lot of noise.

Bad idea.

"What the fuck is the matter with you assholes? You afraid of a couple of old bastards in Halloween costumes? Pick up those guns and shoot! Shoot!"

Eddie casually moved away from the wall.

"Hey, kid, shut your trap, sit back down, an' put your hands on the table. That's the Comedian. The genuine article. You pick up one of those pieces, you're dead. And that goes double for all of you." Sally told them,

"Shoot!" the leader insisted.

"Shut the fuck up, punk! I'm in charge here." Eddie barked.

Sally had tried to warm them.

"Any of you other punks wanna live to see daybreak, get up against that wall, an' put your hands behind your heads. I'll give you until five. One…Two…T'ree…"

His men looked at their leader, and then at Eddie, and they all moved their asses before Eddie could get to four.

"Okay, okay. We don't want no trouble, see?" said one of the punks.

"That's good. Smart little punks. Except for you, huh, Mr. Big Man? You got some ideas?"

The ringleader gave the Comedian a cocky look.

"Hey, this is my operation, old man. You ain't gonna come in here and bust it up. I got girls, I got money, I got product, and I got customers. And they know well enough to be afraid of me. That's a lesson you're gonna learn. See, you punks? He's just an old man, jerkin' off! All you gotta do is pick up and gun and…"

_** BLAM!**_

Sally assumed he was going to say "shoot", but before he could say it, Eddie did it.

The ringleader's hand with his gun still in it, and a good bit of his arm to boot, plopped onto the table in a gaudy spray of blood.

Eddie stepped forward, his shotgun smoking in his hand.

"Punks like you, you can't ever do anything the easy way, can you?"

"Fuck you, old man! Fuck you!"

The punk was fairly game; he, put his stump under his arm and had a knife in his remaining hand, which Eddie, with a carefree laugh, relieved him of.

"Tough guy, huh? That asshole kid who stabbed Jack Napier's daughter? The one she nearly killed with a brick? Who was that little punk to you, big man?"

"He was my brother, you son of a bitch."

"Nice family. Reminds me of mine. Bet your brother's in hell with my Old Man. He was a tough guy, just like you. Tell the old bastard I said hello, when youse sees him. Tell him I sent ya. He'll make the fire all that much more hot for ya."

Eddie stabbed the switchblade into the ringleader's neck with all his might, broke it the blade off, and punched the young man in the neck, driving the blade deeper into his body.

The ringleader was no longer game, he was reeling and screaming and bleeding.

All of his boys had turned their faces away from the wall, and were watching, in horror.

Sally was a little bit horrified too, but Eddie wasn't half as violent as he had been.

In the old days, they'd all be dead by now.

Eddie got hold of him again, put both his hands on either side of the screaming man's face, and with a twist of his wrists, broke the dying man's neck.

"You little fuckers see that? That's me being merciful. I'm gonna be even more merciful, and repeat the lady's offer to get the fuck outa my neighbourhood and not come back. Then I'm gonna count to ten. Anybody still in the fuckin' building dies. And I ain't gonna be merciful with youse."

There was a stampede towards the door.

"Lemme go, lady, please."

"Letcha go, huh? What about those little girls ya made into junkies and turned out? When they begged you to let 'em go, didja do it?" Sally asked the punk under her boot.

"Please, please, lady, I don't wanna die. Please."

"Shut up." Sally told him.

Meanwhile, Sally heard police sirens outside, almost immediately.

Eddie had probably had Mickey and the local cops waiting, and radioed them while she was busting in.

She took her foot off the punk's neck, and hauled him to his feet.

"Come on, pretty boy. Time for you to go to the Tombs for a taste of your own medicine."

She shoved the punk out in front of her, and one of the policemen on the scene cuffed him and loaded him into the waiting paddy wagon with the rest of his friends.

Eddie came out after her; there was blood on his face, his bare arms, and his hands, but if it bothered him, he didn't look it.

"There's a dead one in there, for ya, Mickey. Pulled a gun on us. And a knife."

"Just one? That's an improvement. I figured it was a good idea, bringin' the meat wagon. You and Sal better get outa here, the press is coming. Unless you feel like having your picture taken, tonight."

"Not tonight, Mickey. Too close to home. C'mon, Sal. Let's go."

***

"Whaddya mean, you can't go to your apartment like that? Why not? Whaddya usually do?"

"You want me to walk in the front door in my fuckin' costume, covered in blood? I usually stop an' change at the house in Bensonhurst, but alla the kids are prob'ly just getting' home from the movies. They prob'ly invited Liv over, maybe Mac's kid, Joe, an' them and Paulie and Pat, they'll be up all night. C'mon, Sal. I'll take a fuckin' shower and leave."

"You do that, Eddie. Then you get back in your car and go home! And don't get blood all over my floors! I just had new carpets put in! Come on. There's a door around the back of the building, it goes in through the kitchen."

While Eddie was in the shower, Sally changed out of her costume and into the ugliest housedress and rattiest robe she owned and went back into the kitchen and poured herself a drink.

Her heart was still racing in her chest.

_I can still do my job, even after all these years I still got it. _

She could hear the pipes moaning, goddamn Eddie was using all of her hot water.

He probably thought she was going to get all bent out of shape, thinking about him all wet and naked, and go upstairs and blow him in the shower and then spread herself out all over the bed like some dumb floozie in a cheap fuckbook.

Like the way they made her out in those Tijuana bibles.

She had seen one, once, about her and Eddie; it was pretty dirty and pretty close to the truth, and Sally put it out of her mind.

Put the whole idea out of her mind.

Until that cocky son of a bitch came strutting into the kitchen with a towel.

The towel wasn't on him, either, he was using it to dry his hair.

"Eddie!"

"What? You seen it all before. I hadda leave my clothes down here, I woulda got blood all over 'em."

He saw the laundry basket sitting by the door to the basement and threw the towel into it.

"Don't look at me like that unless you mean it, Sal."

"I ain't lookin' at you. Don't be so fuckin' conceited! You think you're the only man in the world? Put your pants on and take a fuckin' powder."

Eddie sat down, took her empty glass, and poured himself a drink.

"Maybe I will, an' maybe I won't. And don't think you're safe because you got those gramma rags on. I know what you got under 'em."

"Okay Eddie. Cut the comedy. Time for you to go home."

"Home? Ta who? For what?"

"C'mon, Eddie. What the hell would you want with an old broad like me?"

"Aww, shit, Sal, I feel the same way about youse that I did the day I metcha."

"Sure. You still keep a poster of me on your bedroom wall."

"Fuck yeah, I do."

He got this look on his face; that look of lust that still reminded her of the trophy room and frightened her on one hand, but also reminded her of that one day, and made her feel…

Molten.

"Eddie, Jesus Christ, give it a rest. Go home."

Sally's heart was beating very fast.

She was talking out of both sides of her mouth, and she knew it.

"Do ya really want me to go home, Sal?"

She was about to tell him yes, but then she heard a car horn honking and she could hear Laurie yelling, "G'bye! Thanks Mister Wayne!"

"Fuck! Get your shit and go upstairs! Now! Last bedroom on the left and shut the fuckin' door!" Sally insisted.

Eddie made tracks.

Laurie unlocked the door.

"Hi Ma. I was gonna go stay at Liv's but I saw your car. Paulie's got the chicken pox so me and Liv couldn't stay. I'm hungry. Can I have some cookies and milk?"

She sat down at the kitchen table.

"It's a little late for cookies and milk, don't you think?"

"Please, Ma?"

"Okay. But only two Oreos and a half a glass. I don't want you waking up havin' a bellyache. How was the movie?"

"Okay I guess. We went in Ivan's truck. Ivan and Edie an' Aggie an' Pat and Paulie and Bridget. And me an Liv'. We drove alla way out to New Jersey to the drive-in. Bridget never cried the whole way. She just looks at everybody like she knows exactly what's goin' on. She's a real strange goddam kid for a two-year old…"

"Don't swear, Laurie."

"Well, she is! There were three movies and we only went to one because the boys were complainin' they was itchy an' they didn't feel good. An' when we got back, Edie said it looked like the chicken pox, and she made me and Liv take baths in really hot water with this really stinky soap, and washed our clothes and Liv's stepdad came and got us. Can I have another cookie?"

"No, honey. It's way past your bedtime. Mommy's, too. Come on, let's go to bed."

"Ma, you don't hafta hide him. What do I care if Paulie's Uncle Eddie is your boyfriend?"

"What do I have to do with Paulie's Uncle Eddie?"

"C'mon, Mom. I know who he is. Just because a guy has a mask on, if you know him, it's not like you don't see who he is. Well, Paulie don't. But that's his uncle, so it figures. But I do. I know you guys used to work together. And I saw his car, outside."

"I trained you too well, didn't I? Laurie, Eddie's not my boyfriend. We had to do some work, together, like we did before you were born, and he came here to change out of his costume."

"Oh. Well, I don't care either way. At least I know him. You sure I can't have one more cookie?"

"Yes. Come on, let's go to bed."

Sally put Laurie to bed, and then, she went to her bedroom.

Eddie had not gotten dressed, he was lying in bed, waiting for her, with that fucking smirk plastered all over his face.

"Eddie!"

"What? I hadda try. C'mon, baby, don't kick me outa your bed."

Why should I?

Larry's gone for good.

Laurie doesn't know who he is.

Just Paulie's uncle.

Just some guy I was a mask with, a long, long time ago.

She's in bed, she won't even see him, anyway.

Who even remembers what happened in 1938?

Who even cares?

"Don't gimme that look, Eddie. Not this time. We don't need any more kids, and we got one two doors down, sleeping. I'm gonna go in the can an' take care of a few things. You make sure you keep the door shut. An' get goin' early, tomorrow. I don't want Laurie to know you spent the night."

"Gee, Sal, you got this down to a science. You must do it a lot." Eddie quipped.

"You wanna talk your way out into the street, smart-ass?"

***

Sally closed her bathrobe, as she quietly shut the bathroom door.

She had put on her regular nightie and robe; she supposed Eddie was probably going to take them off of her, but hell, she wanted him to take them off of her, didn't she?'

She looked into Laurie's bedroom as she passed it, at the far end of the hall from her own bedroom.

Laurie was sound asleep.

Sally always felt guilty, just a little, when she looked in on Laurie on her way to her room where a man was waiting for her.

Tonight, she didn't feel guilty.

After all, it wasn't some stranger, it was Eddie.

He was Laurie's father.

This is the way it was supposed to be.

Sally continued on down the hallway, and went into her bedroom.

"Still there, huh?"

"Where was I gonna go?"

Sally took off her robe.

"Out the window and down the fucking drainpipe, if you were smart. Now you listen to me, Eddie, and you listen, good. I'm tired of tellin' mysef you're no good, and I don't wantcha. You are no damn good, but I don't care. I coulda had a whole buncha guys better than you, Eddie, but I didn't, and if this is all I'm gonna get, I better get it. When I get done with you, you're gonna crawl out that door in the morning, because you won't be able to walk."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

Eddie just laughed.

"And Mason thought he was gonna marry you. C'mere, baby. I got what you need."

It was like they had just been waiting eleven years for each other and that quickie in the car had only bean a teaser for the main event.

They really made a mess of the bedroom, and Sally didn't so much fall asleep as pass out.

When she woke up in the morning, all the blankets and pillows were on the floor, and she and and Eddie were on the floor with them, tangled up in the blankets and each other, asleep.

The lamp was on the floor, too, and so was the end table with it.

Sally only woke up when she heard Laurie knocking on the door.

"Come on, Mom! Mom! Liv's gonna be here, soon! I'm hungry."

"Oh shit! You stay here, Eddie, and be fuckin' quiet!"

Sally got out of bed, put her robe on, and slipped out the door.

"Okay, alright, Laurie, don't shout. It's too early in the morning to shout. Go on downstairs and set the table for us."

**II: Laurie**

While Sally was in the bathroom, a curious Laurie pushed the bedroom door open.

On the rare occasion she caught one of her Mom's boyfriends still at the house in the morning she wanted to see who they were and what they looked like.

Sure enough, Paulie's uncle was sitting on the end of his bed with his pants on and no shirt, with his back to her, putting on his boots.

The lamp was on the floor, and so was a pillow, and he threw the pillow back on the bed and put the lamp back on the end-table.

"Maybe I can't seeya, Laurie, but I know you're there, sneakin' around behind the door."

"Hey, Eddie."

"Hiya, kid."

"Are you the guy who keeps coming here?"

"Me? Not yet."

Laurie stood in the doorway.

"You gonna come down and eat breakfast with us? Nobody else does."

"Nope. I gotta go to work."

He stood up and put an undershirt on.

"But you don't have a regular job."

"No, I don't. But ya gotta go to work, sometime, dontcha?"

He walked out the door, past Laurie, patted her on the head and went down the stairs.

She followed him.

"Dontcha have a shirt?"

"Naaa. It's gettin' warm, again. Don't need one."

Laurie made a face.

"That's what Ivan says. He only wears shirts in the winter, too. Larry always wore a shirt, though. Alla time."

"That's because me an' Ivan are men, and Larry was a lousy rotten queer."

"Yeah. I never liked him. He was a real asshole."

"Don't swear so much, kid."

"Why not? Hey, are you coming back?"

She always asked them that, and they always looked hopeful and told her that was up to her Mom, or something.

Eddie was different.

Standing in the doorway, he smiled a real cocky, smart-ass grin.

"Yeah, honey. I am."

"Then why dontcha stay an' eat breakfast?"

He closed the door.

"Okay, ya talked me into it."

Eddie ignored the dirty look Sally was giving him and sat down at the kitchen table.

"What am I supposed ta say? No?"

"Well, I guess it's just breakfast."

Laurie set a place for him, and he was waiting for somebody to go over to the stove, but Laurie had a box of frosted Flakes and Sally was putting butter on a bagel.

"This is breakfast? Where's the fuckin' food?"

"You know I can't cook. She doesn't like that stuff, anyway."

"Bullshit! Gimme that box. Don't eat this shit, Laurie. It's all sugar and cardboard. You like bacon and eggs? How about pancakes?"

Laurie nodded, vigorously.

"Yeah. Your sister makes 'em for me, whem I'm over at Paulie's house."

"See? Ya can't feed this stuff to a kid, Sal. You'll stunt their fuckin' growth. C'mon kid. Lemme show ya somethin'. Somebody hasta teach youse how to cook."

"Eddie!" Sally protested.

"What? What's she gonna do when she moves outa here and she's on her own and she can't even boil water? Now, whatcha do is, you put the burner on medium, and you roll the butter around in the pan till it melts. And y'wanna put milk in the eggs before ya scramble 'em, it makes 'em get real big an' fluffy…"


	3. Born To Kill

**Chapter Three: Born To Kill**

**New York City, Sally Jupiter's Apartment, Central Park West, December 1962**

**I: Laurie**

Unlike Liv, Laurie really didn't like the taste of beer.

She took one sip, just to be polite, and passed the can back to her friend.

"I still can't believe you did it with Frankie Bear. He's about seven million times more disgusting than old Popeye! He used to try an' beat on us when we were kids. Hell, at least up till two or three years ago. And he's ugly as hell."

Liv shrugged.

"Men ain't supposedta be pretty. Well, Popeye got so fuckin' upset when he found out I was only 13, yunno? Jesus, my Ma met my Daddy when she was 13. She married him when she was 15. So I figured, what the fuck I'll try somebody around my own age. Bear, he's like, 16, an' he's the only guy I could think of who at least looks like a man. And at least I know him."

"What about Joe Mac? Ya know him, ya've known him since you was seven. He won't do ya dirty like Popeye did. An' he looks pretty grown up, he could pass for 19 or 20. An' ya don't hate him."

"I don't hate Bear. He turned out okay."

"He's a crazy fuckin' asshole!"

"But he's okay. He's one of us, now. But you gotta point about Joe. But Joe and me, we go way back. I don't wanna screw up us bein' friends."

"That's what Joe says."

"He does?"

"Yeah. He told me. He just doesn't wanna say anything, onna count of he thinks you wont wanna be friends no more."

"Awww, that's kinda cute. Maybe I'll hafta give him a real nice Christmas present." Liv leered.

"You gotta one track mind."

There was a knock on the door.

"What?"

"It's me, Paulie."

There was Paulie, sure enough.

Crazy Paulie, and his goofy-looking moustache and his haphazard patches of whiskers and his shaggy looking hair.

"Hiya, Paulie. You're late."

Paulie threw the old knapsack he was carrying onto Laurie's bed, and started rooting around in it for his pyjamas.

Which generally consisted of his briefs and a tee shirt, but since he was staying at Laurie's, he had worn boxers.

"I know. Ma was givin' me alla this shit about I'm too old to sleep over with you guys. Like I'm gonna have a big make out party with a coupla girls who are practically my sisters. You guys see my beard growin' in?"

"Is that what that shit is all over your face?" Laurie asked.

"Yeah. We thought it was a fungus. And you was the fungus among us." Liv joked.

"Yeah, well, you two oughta think about shavin' your legs. 'Specially you, Liv. Ya look like a hairy carrot."

Liv was about to say something when, from downstairs, the low roar of shouting that the two 13 year olds having a sleepover had been ignoring escalated considerably, and was accompanied by the sound of glass breaking.

"You think your Ma needs help?" Liv asked.

"She might." Laurie said.

"Don't worry. It's just my Uncle." Paulie was telling them.

"Well, let's check it out, anyway." Liv decided.

The two trainee superherores, Laurie in a pair of pajama bottoms and a PS 154 Gym tee shirt, and Liv in her underwear, GI-Issue army surplus boxers and an A-line undershirt, in olive drab, crept out into the hallway.

"…goddamn you, Eddie, you lousy, no good son of a bitch! You get the fuck outa here, or I'll cut your goddamn ear off!"

"Fuckin' shit-faced drunk again, huh? I like that! Ya got two kids upstairs you're supposed ta be watchin', an' your fuckin' shit-faced drunk!"

"It's your fault! All you fuckin fault ya…"

They went back into Laurie's bedroom.

"Nothin' special, Paulie. You was right." Liv said.

"Toleja." Paulie replied.

"Jesus, there they go again! I can see why Mom didn't stick with Eddie. Half of what they do is scream at each other. She even fuckin' screams at him over the phone when he's not around. She must like screamin'."

"Naah. It's probably for what they do the other half of the time." Liv cracked.

"LIV!"

"What? Put the TV on. The late movie's going to be on, soon."

The Late Movie was a Western, and not only that, it was a John Wayne movie.

Screaming or no screaming, nothing was going to stop Liv and Laurie from getting some popcorn for the John Wayne movie, and they came crashing down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"Hi Eddie. Ma, you broke something." Laurie said, offhand.

"Hi, Mr. Blake."

Liv looked like she had more to say, but Laurie grabbed her and dragged her across the kitchen.

"Ma, where's the popcorn popper?"

"What?" Sally asked.

She was not, in fact, drunk, just very upset.

"You know, the thing. The goddamn popcorn thing."

"You stay away from that! The last time you two tried to make popcorn, all you made was a mess that I had to clean up. Go back upstairs and I'll bring it to you. Where's Paulie?" Sally told Laurie.

"Upstairs."

"You know, you girls are getting too old for sleepovers with Paulie."

"That's really gross, Ma. Paulie's practically my brother." Laurie told her.

"Yeah. An' Paulie, he ain't my type. I'd rather go for the original." Liv agreed.

She had located a bag of potato chips, and she tucked it under her arm.

"Liv, what the fuck are you wearing?" Eddie asked.

"Liv! You shouldn't be parading around in front of Eddie in your underwear!" Sally told her.

"Relax, mom. Her underwear is pretty much what we wear at school in gym class."

"That's your underwear?" Eddie snorted in disbelief.

"Yup." Liv replied, tearing open the chips.

"It looks more like GI Joe's fuckin' underwear. Why are youse wearin' men's army underwear?" he asked.

Liv shoved a handful of chips into her mouth and chewed, thoughtfully.

"I'm gonna be a mask, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if I get shot, an' they take me to the goddamn hospital, an' I'm all unconscious, an' shit, an' they gotta cut my costume offa me, if I got all this girly goddamn underwear on, who's gonna take me seriously?"

"What the fuck is that supposta mean?"

Laurie grabbed her by the arm.

"Don't listen to her, Eddie. She's crazy. Come on, Liv. We'll miss the movie."

"G'night, Mr. Blake." Liv yelled as Laurie dragged her upstairs.

"Sal, is it just me, or is that kid startin' ta act funny?"

"Who, Liv? Funny ain't the word. She's discovered beer and boys. Nice habits to go with cigarettes an' fights. I'm glad Laurie's not crazy like that. How does this crazy machine fucking work?"

"I'll do it."

"Then you'll leave?"

"Maybe."

**II: Sally**

On the short list of bad days, Sally had a doozy.

Whereas Laurie was sort of easing into puberty, normally, being a teenager had hit Liv Napier like a Mack truck, and when she came around, she had started shaping up to be one of those Peck's bad boy kind of kids who spent their free time in search of another smoke, another beer, a feel or two, and a fight with anyone who looked at them funny.

Except she was a girl.

However, other than the fact that she chased boys, she didn't act much like one.

Laurie frequently rolled her eyes and said that Liv was "kinda crazy" and she wasn't going her friend's way, but Sally still worried about her.

She worried about Liv, too.

After all, she didn't have a mother, and Sally was training her.

Then, on this of all mornings, over an early lunch, Hollis blurted out some disturbing information that he learned about Popeye MacTavish.

Popeye, who had been in the Navy for about a hundred years, was a short, burly ginger tough-guy who had had tattoos on his bulgy forearms and had been in the Navy for 20 years before he ran a crooked pawn shop on Fulton street over in East New York, Liv's old neighbourhood in Brooklyn.

He was one of the most hated men in Brooklyn, and Hollis wasn't too fond of him. The cops had been trying to get Popeye for years, unsuccessfully, and even though Hollis had retired from being a cop and a mask, he kept tabs on Popeye.

Sometimes Popeye he took merchandise he didn't know if it was hot or not, sometimes he sold people's goods before their ticket expired and he never paid what an item was worth. In addition, and he sold cases of beer out the back to teenagers.

Well, Popeye, who was a year older than Sally, he'd had a pretty good thing going on with a little Irish girl about 17, built like a brick shithouse, a pretty little overgrown tomboy who looked like a naughty pixie in Levis or coveralls who came to him to buy a case of beer every week.

Then, he found out that the girl in question was precocious and an early bloomer, and that not only was she only 13, but that he had popped her cherry for her.

Popeye was distraught.

She drove her own car, which meant she had to be at least 16, and she didn't come on like a little girl, and when he'd first done the dirty deed to her, in the back of her 1933 Ford V-8 that she'd bragged she built up from junk, there was no bleeding and no screaming.

How was he to know she was just a kid?

Then, when he found out who her father was, he went to see his mechanic, Hollis Mason, who used to be a cop, hat in hand.

He would stop selling booze to minors, he was done, this had cured him. And from now on he would run his pawn shop like a priest ran his church. How did he know the girl was only 13? She drove a car, she had a license, not a permit, and there was a grease stain over the year, but Liv was a real grease monkey. She never said she was 13, she had tits out to here, for Christ's sake, she kept a knife in her pocket and wore a gun strapped to her ankle and swore like a sailor, and she said she went to FDR High and was graduating in a year or so.

That didn't add up to 13, what if her father wanted to haul him before a judge for statutory rape?

What should he do?

Did he need a lawyer?

He would never touch her again, he'd go straight, straight as an arrow, his right hand to God.

Did her stepfather even know what she was up to?

Somebody should tell him.

The girl didn't even seem to understand why Popeye wouldn't let her come around, anymore.

Now, Hollis had told Popeye MacTavish that was what he got for running a shady business, and exacted a promised from him that from now on he'd toe the line, and said he knew the girl's people, he'd take care of it.

Hollis told Sally.

He wasn't willing to buy Popeye's "Oh, Poor Me" bit, but at least he could keep him honest, from now on.

Did Hollis think it was up to her to keep Liv honest?

Maybe he figured she'd supply Popeye with a little reinforcement.

Maybe the bastard didn't know, but he never cared enough to find out, and Sally slipped on her costume, and paid him a little visit and bounced Mr. Tough Guy around the walls of his pawn shop a little.

She left him dazed and bloody, and reminded him that if he put his toe over the line, if she heard he was taking hot property, or selling booze to kids, or chasing around with Liv anymore, she'd be back, and this time she'd bring an old friend of hers with her.

An old friend who had plenty of reasons to hate dirty old men who were two-bit criminals.

The Comedian.

Sally took Laurie aside, and Laurie admitted knowing about Liv and Popeye MacTavish, and that Paulie knew too, but they weren't about to squeal on her, and what were they supposed to do?

Hollis and Sally finally decided to wait until after the upcoming holidays, and then they would go, together, and tell Bruce what his stepdaughter was up to on weekends when she probably told her overworked stepfather that she was with Laurie or Paulie.

Sally felt terrible about it.

Liv was going about as wrong as wrong could go, and, maybe it was just teenage high spirits, but if it was any indication of how things were going to be, then they were in for a bumpy five years.

Worse, Liv Napier was Laurie's best friend, to whom she was fiercely loyal.

Thinking about Laurie, going the way Liv was, the way, quite admittedly, that Sally had when she was a teenager made Sally sick.

She had started running around with boys and drinking at 13, and at 15, she was lying about her age and working as a burlesque dancer in a club on 42nd Street.

Not to mention that , in all the commotion about Popeye MacTavish's revelation, Hollis forgot what today was.

Today was the anniversary of the worst day of her life.

That night in the trophy room.

23 years had passed, and it remained fresh in Sally's mind.

Sometimes, during those times she and Eddie were on again, she'd be lying there in bed with him, at night, and dream about it.

Was irony even the word for waking up screaming in a cold sweat, and looking for comfort in the arms of the man who had made your nightmare?

It made her feel a little better to think that she had fallen in love with Eddie, the good Eddie, the one who raised his family and put on a mask to get evil pricks like his late father off the street before that night, and that she had eventually forgiven him, because she still loved him.

They had Laurie between them, and even now, Eddie never poked into her business or chided her for her drinking and her cursing and the kind of men she ran around with; the son of a bitch loved her the way she was.

Most of the time, that was how she had it in her mind.

That was how she could justify calling him up after a few months went by, letting him come around, again, maybe once a week, twice, until they got into another fight and she quit speaking to him or he quit speaking to her for another couple of months.

But not tonight.

Tonight all she could remember was the fear and the blood and the pain, and that wild look in Eddie's eyes and how frightfully sick it all was.

Laurie, of course, had no idea about any of it; to her it was just another Saturday, and one close to Christmas, and she didn't think anything of asking Sally if Liv could stay over.

Now, Popeye MacTavish was the original drunken sailor, and a crooked businessman, but he wasn't an evil man, and he had likely treated his teenage tomboy girl well enough before he gave her the horrified heave-ho.

He certainly hadn't done anything to harm her, Popeye wasn't the type.

But, unless Sally was imagining Liv making eyes at "Mr. Blake" and she had decided, already that he was the kind of guy she liked, God only knew what kind of trouble she could get into with that kind of man, so she jumped at the chance to have Liv where she could watch her.

The girls would be in Laurie's room most of the night, watching TV and listening to records and all the usual teenage girl things, leaving Sally alone with her misery.

She bought them a pizza and a six-pack of Coke, and settled into a long evening with her misery and a bottle of whiskey.

Somewhere around 11:30, when she had drank more of it that she'd hoped she would, the son of a bitch dared to show up.

**III: Eddie**

One thing about Edie, she never minced words.

"Paulie, go sit in the car."

"Who's car?"

"Then just go outside and wait."

Paulie looked from his mother to his uncle, and quietly doded out the kitchen door.

Edie waited till she heard it slam.

"Listen, Eddie, are you outa your fuckin' mind? Tonight, you wanna go see Sally, when you ain't seen her since right after the kids went back to school? Tonight, of all fuckin' nights? Wouldja like to die?"

"What? Somebody's gotta take Paulie. An' why shouldn't I? Why should me an' Sally hafta suffer?"

"Because you fucked up, Eddie! Because you did a real bad thing, and this is the anniversary of it, that's why."

"All the more reason I should go."

Eddie drove Paulie over to Sal's place

She wasn't mean with the kid, she just reminded him that he was getting too old for sleepovers with Liv and Laurie.

Paulie looked incredibly disgusted.

"Geez, Miz Jupiter, I wouldn't do somethin' like that. An' Liv, well, they're both, yunno, like sisters to me. I don't think of them as, yunno, like girls."

He made a quick exit, his face with its patchy whiskers beet red.

Sally waited until the door shut, upstairs.

She got up and slapped Eddie right in the face.

"You gotta lotta nerve, showin' up here, tonight, ya no-good shanty Irish sunnuvabitch! Get the fuck outa my house!"

That was actually a better reception than Eddie expected.

"C'mon, Sal. Don't beat yourself up about this. It was my fuckin' fault. I was a mean, rotten, evil little son of a bitch, an' I did a lousy fuckin' thing to ya."

"I know that, Eddie! I fucking know that! Why do you think I'm sitting here with this bottle of whiskey! Ya know somethin'? I really liked you. I mighta been in love with you. Even then. We coulda had a nice life, Eddie. Maybe not the most conventional life, I'm sure there woulda been a lot of drinkin; and screwin' around, on both our parts, and we might not have ever got around to gettin' married, but we still coulda had a nice life. You coulda been Laurie's father, insteada playin' at it a couple times a week a few months outa the year. But you fucked it all up. Fucked up my life. And yours. And hers!"

Now that was way the fuck out of line.

"Don't start that shit with me, Sal! You're the one who decided Laurie shouldn't know who her own father was, an' I went along with it. I raised four kids before I was thirty, an' I've had a hand in raisin' Paulie an' Pat, an' I never did nothin' ta hurt any of 'em? Ya think I woulda been any different with my own daughter? That's all your fault, not mine!" Eddie yelled back.

Sally hit the roof, she threw the bottle on the ground.

"What? You motherfucker, you're gonna talk to me like that? Tonight? Goddamn you, Eddie, you lousy, no good son of a bitch! You get the fuck outa here, or I'll cut your goddamn ear off!"

"Fuckin' shit-faced drunk again, huh? I like that! Ya got two, no, three kids upstairs you're supposedta be watchin', an' your fuckin' shit-faced drunk!"

"It's your fault! All you fuckin fault ya lousy rotten bastard!"

That, of course was when the girls came into the kitchen, and Eddie was temporarily distracted by the odd fact that Jack's kid was wearing men's military underwear.

And when he tried to talk to her about it, his kid dragged her away.

"Sal, is it just me, or is that kid startin' ta act funny?"

"Who, Liv? Funny ain't the word. She's discovered beer and boys. Nice habits to go with cigarettes an' fights. I'm glad Laurie's not crazy like that. How does this crazy machine fucking work?"

"I'll do it."

"Then you'll leave?"

"Maybe."

"Jesus, Sal, anything to do with cookin' and your're lost. The oil goes in here, an' the popcorn goes in here, and then it comes outa the slot and goes in the bowl. You sure she ain't? Because I know Laurie's welded to Jack's kid. You couldn't break 'em up."

"Don't worry about that, Eddie, I'm keeping my eye on Laurie. I try to keep my eye on both of them. Especially Liv. She's got her eye on you, and when she goes out looking for company, it's not boys she's looking for. It's a big bad man, just like her Mr. Blake."

"You're crazy, Sal. She's just a kid."

"Well, she's already runnin' with men. Not boys. Men. How old were you when you got started? I was 13."

"So was I. But I didn't start with broads old enough to be my mother. You're imaginin' things."

"Eddie, I know the way I look at you. And Liv looks at you the same way."

Eddie just laughed.

"Awww, she's just a kid. It's one of those teenage girl things. She'll meet some guy at school who likes cars as much as she does, or who's a real brain, an' she'll forget all about me. Hell, the kid still calls me Mr. Blake."

He handed her the bowl of popcorn.

And she was crying.

Women.

Sally pushed past him, took the popcorn upstairs and came back down.

"It was right around now, Eddie. Twenty-three years ago. Why? Really. Whydja do it?"

"Ya really wanna know? Because, it ain't pretty."

Sally sat down at the kitchen table.

Eddie sat with her.

"Ya know Sal, I never met a doll like you, before. I mean, I had a lotta women, but I never really gave a fuck for any of 'em. I mean I liked 'em well enough, but I could take a broad or leave her. An' love, I didn't know shit about that. I knew that no matter what Pop did to Ma, or us, and how much she hated herself for it, she never could manage to quit bein' glad ta see him. It took me a long time ta realise that was it, that I was in love with youse. An' it drove me crazy. I'd see some guy lookin' at youse, an I wanted ta kill him. Some low-life you was fightin', he blacked your eye or somethin', an I went inna jail after him, and smashed his head against the wall of the holdin' cell until his brains started squirtin' out his ears. I can't explain it, every day I'd get up in a crazy fuckin' rage, but horny as a junkyard dog under a full moon. I couldn't get ta sleep at night unless I hurt somebody, or fucked some broad, and then I'd get a few hours an' it would be at me, again. Then, at the party, when that Nazi faggot bastard draped himself all over you, I almost killed him. I was thinking about tearin' his fuckin' throat out with my teeth, like a goddamn animal. And you was always so nice ta me, an' when ya went inna trophy room, an' said about changin', I thought that was my green light. Ya really did just about have "no" through my head when ya hit me. An' when I tasted my blood in my mouth, that was it. I switched stations. I wasn't beatin' youse to soften you up so I could fuck you, I was beatin' youse to beat you. An' when you was on the ground, I switched back again. I thought I'd make it up to ya. I thought maybe ya wouldn't be so mad, after all it wasn't like I just beat ya up. I thought I could explain. That's the way it worked at home. Yeah, well, twenty-three years ago tonight, I figured out that shit don't work that way."

Eddie wondered if Sal felt as horrified as she looked.

"Wait a minute. Eddie, are you tryin' to tell me that you went into some crazy homicidal rage because I was trying to resist your attempt at rape, and then when ya beat me to the ground an' my ass was showin', ya figured you'd make it up to me by fuckin' me instead off killin' me, an you was surprised I counted it all as a rape attempt? You figured atht f you quit beatin' me an' fucked me, instead, that would make it all OK, and I'd feel better? How the fuck did you hatch that shit?"

Eddie put out his cigar, and ran his hand through his hair in a fist.

His face twisted up as he choked out his reply.

"Sal, my father threw my oldest brother, Paul, down the steps and left him there to die so it would look more like an accident and less like murder. He'd beat Ma up' in front of alla us, and when she was lyin' there, bleedin' an' cryin'. He'd get all sorry an' tell us all t get the hell out, an; then he'd fuck her. Like that made it up to her. You'd hear her, sayin' his name. She was prob'ly just glad he wasn't hurtin' her, anymore. Hell, if he felt like it, he'd take Edie into the bedroom with him, talk to her nice and tell her she was his special girl, an' Edie told me that it was worse on her because he didn't beat her up an' get rough with her, he'd try to make her like it. Hell, after he was in jail long enough, when he came home, he'd yell for Paul to go get the Vaseline, and the day Paul refused, Pop killed him. Threw him down the stairs and left him to die. Called us all over an' pointed his finger and Paul lyin' there. And he tells us that he made us and he'll do what he wants with us, and if we give him trouble that's what'll happen. Me, after that, when told me to go get the Vaseline, I went. What the fuck did I know about love?"

He wished he hadn't told her any of it, because it made him want to cry on one hand, and on the other, it made him incredibly fucking angry.

Sally grabbed his hand.

"Oh Jesus, Eddie! Jesus, I'm sorry!" she blurted out.

"I'm sorry, too, Sal. At least I figured it out, right?"

The funny thing was, as long as he didn't talk about it, or even think about it, too much, it didn't bother him a lot, what the old man had done to him. Killing the evil son of a bitch had gone a long way towards that.

But, talking about it, that was bad.

He never had talked about it to anybody but Edie, and he wasn't sure what he was going to do, next.

Maybe Sally thought he was going to cry, because she was on the other side of the table, hugging him, and Eddie was quiet and still a long time, with his head in his hands, trying to stuff those memories back into whatever hole he had them in, before, and regain his composure.

Until he was himself again.

"Shit. I'm gonna go check on Paulie. He knows Laurie's his blood, but Liv ain't." he announced.

He didn't really look at Sal as he got up; he was afraid that if he did that, he'd start to cry/

Eddie stomped up the stairs, and he didn't knock on Laurie's bedroom door, he just opened it.

She was lying in her bed, and Liv and Paulie were lying on sleeping bags on the floor.

John Wayne was on TV and they were glued to the screen.

It made him feel better.

His daughter, his nephew, and their friend, Merrie and Jack's kid, watching the TV, just having a regular night in their lives that had been untroubled by poverty, violence, and rape.

They didn't know how hard that the adults in their lives had to work to make it so.

"You kids behavin' yourselves?" he asked.

"Hey, Paulie, get your finger outa my pussy, your Uncle's checkin' up on us." Liv cracked.

"That ain't my finger."

"It ain't? Boy, are you in a world of shit!"

"Whaddya want? I'm only 13."

"Yeah, yeah, you kids are real fuckin' funny. Liv, put yer sleepin' bag up on the bed with Laurie."

"But she's a girl!" Liv protested.

"That's the idea."

"But Uncle Eddie, I won't touch her."

"I ain't worried about you, Paulie. It's so Liv don't get any ideas."

He shut the door, stood there for a minute and lit a cigar.

He smoked half of it before he decided to go downstairs and say goodbye to Sal, but as he passed her bedroom door, she opened it.

"Eddie?"

"It's alright, Sal. I'm alright."

"It's midnight, Eddie. That day's over."

"Look, Sal, I'm tellin' ya, I don't feel so good."

"So? Neither do I."

**Long Island Expressway , New York, Summer 1963**

**I: Laurie**

The minute Liv suggested it, Laurie knew it was a bad idea, but, she almost felt like she had to go with her, because God only knew what would happen to her if she went alone.

Good old Liv, she might be a stone cold genius, but she was stone cold crazy, too.

Although, Laurie had to admit, she did a really good job on the old Ford V-8.

Only a month ago, it was a broken down rusty old wreck that she got from the junkyard for $25 bucks, and another $25 for parts, and now, Jesus, it looked like it was all ready for Bonnie and Clyde to rob a bank in.

Liv had said she wanted to take a little ride, just around the area, not on any of the main roads or anything.

She was allowed to do that.

Liv had got special permission to get her learner's permit a year early, through good old Uncle Hollis at the police department.

It had been pretty embarrassing, a superhero-in-training getting picked up, repeatedly, for driving without a licence.

What she wasn't allowed to do was drive on any major roads.

Technically, she wasn't allowed to drive without anybody over the age of 18 in the car, but cops didn't worry too much about some crazy rich kid driving around Long Island in her crazy rich stepfather's exclusive neighbourhood.

But, here they were, speeding down the Long Island Expressway like they were Bonnie and Clyde, with Liv behind the wheel, a can of Newcastle Brown tucked between her legs, five of its friends on the back seat, and a cigarette in her mouth.

That, the cops would definitely frown on.

But Liv, she acted like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Like being in a movie.

Laurie laughed to herself.

"What?"

"Calling all cars! Calling all cars! Be on the lookout for two juvenile females in a 1933 Ford V-8 Sedan. Napier, Trivelino J. Age, 14. Weight, 125 pounds. Height, 4 feet, 11 inches. Juspeczyk , Laurel Jane. Age 14. Weight 115 pounds. Height, 5 feet, 5 inches. Calling all cars."

Liv got into it.

"They have just robbed the First Federal Bank of Manhattan. These girls are armed, and to be considered extremely dangerous. Calling all cars. Calling all cars."

They both began to imitate police sirens, and then, Laurie heard them, for real.

"Oh shit! Fuck! What are we going to do?"

Liv just laughed, and lit another cigarette.

"Cheese it! The cops! Ya doity flatfoots!" she laughed, and put her foot right in the tank.

They zoomed ahead, and the cop car seemed to disappear.

"What the fuck are you doing? We're gonna get arrested!"

"No we ain't. Fuck them fuckin' cops. Relax, I got it covered. My father's a supervillain. I know all about outsmarting the fuzz."

Liv finished her beer, and handed Laurie the can.

"Stash this. And the rest of the six pack. Under the seat. An' lemme have that Listerine in the glove compartment."

Liv washed out her mouth, spit out the window, pulled over, popped in a stick of Doublemint, got out of the car, and popped the hood.

The police car soon pulled up.

Your standard middle aged, square-headed Irish cop got out, adjusting his belt and his belly.

"Holy Kee-rist! How old are you, miss?"

Laurie put on her best, Who, Me? I'm Just A Little Girl smile.

"I'm 14. So's my friend. But she's got a special early learner's permit. Really, officer." Laurie answered.

"Uh huh. Sure she does. You stay right there, missy. Okay, you, under the hood…where did ya go?"

"I'm under the car, officer."

"What are ya doin' under there?"

"Checkin' the brakes. I saw youse back there, officer, honest to God I did, but I put my foot on the brake and nothin' happened. I never made a mistake like that before."

Liv came out from under the car, and Laurie could see the big Mick cop's heart melting.

When he looked at her, he saw a sunny little Irish girl, with two long red pigtails and a thousand watt smile, cracking her gum with a Peck's bad boy smudge of motor oil on her cheek.

Probably looked like one of his own kids.

He didn't know Liv better, so she had him.

"Lemme explain. Cars are my thing. Anything mechanical, really. An' I built this car up from a wreck. It's my first one. I was just…here's my permit…testin' it out and, jeez, I put brand new brakes on this thing. I guess I'll hafta do s'more work on it. I'm real sorry, officer."

The cop was looking at her permit.

"Young lady, where's your father?"

"He's at Arkham."

"So he's a doctor?"

"No, he's the Joker. And my stepfather, Bruce Wayne, he's at work. And if he finds out I took this car on the road, he'll kill me. Please, officer. I'll never do it again. I promise. Just let me go home. Please."

The cop slid his hat back on his head.

So this was Bruce Wayne's red-headed stepchild.

Literally.

She didn't seem like the bad seed to him, she was a nice, sunny little Irish girl.

"Let me see those brakes."

He got under the car.

"Good God, no wonder you couldn't slow down!"

Laboriously, the cop crawled out.

"The brake line's cut! You must have gone over some glass. That's why this permit says that you can't be in a car without an adult, or on main roads, Miss Napier. You and your girlfriend might have been killed! How did you stop?"

"Parking break. And all that gravel."

"Well, I can't just leave you girls here, on the side of the road! Anything might happen to you! What about you, miss? Is your father available?"

Laurie thought fast.

Who can we call that's over 18, would pass for my father, and just might not rat us out?

Eddie.

Her mother hadn't spoken to Eddie in three months, but she never had any beef with him, and he was her best friend's uncle, and she secretly went with him and Paulie at Pat and Liv to the drive-in every weekend, and he was around a lot when he was around, so she figured she could trust him.

It was a long shot, but he was their only chance.

"Uhhhh…yeah. Yeah, sure. He's at work, too, but I can call him."

Liv gave her an incredulous look.

"You know, Liv. My father. Eddie."

"Took you long enough." Liv snorted.

Laurie wasn't paying attention

"Alright, then, girls, I'll take you to a pay phone."

"What about my car, officer?" Liv protested.

"I'll have my partner wait with it."

**II: Eddie**

Edward Morgan Blake, Level 10 S.H.I.E.L.D agent and Director of Covert Operations, was sitting behind his desk at his office at HQ, downtown, a rare thing, poring over a map of Cuba, having wonderful awful ideas, and chewing on the end of a cigar when his phone rang.

"What?"

"Is he there?"

"Shut up, Liv! Eddie? Izzat you?"

Laurie.

And Liv Napier.

It had to be trouble.

"Yeah. It's me. What the fuck did you do?"

"Me? Nothin'! Nothin' at all! I been callin' you all around town. Look, Eddie, Jesus, ya gotta believe me. I just went for a ride with Liv in her car. Around the neighbourhood. Her neighbourhood out on Long Island. In the old Ford V-8 that she put back together. Anyways, somehow we ended up on the expressway. And this cop stopped us. Liv convinced him we were goin' real fast because the brakes were fucked up, but he won't let us go and she hadda cut the break line, you know, unless somebody's father showed up. If we call Mr. Wayne, he'll kill Liv, and he'll tell Ma and she'll kill me and all we were doin' was drivin'. We didn't hurt anybody. We was just drivin'! Can you pretend to be my father and come and get us? I mean, I know you ain't been around for like three months and all and, but we're in a lotta trouble an', I mean I don't really have a father, an…"

"An' all you got is me? Yeah, well, that's plenty. Okay Lar, I get it. Where are you?"

"You're comin'? Really? Liv! Eddie's comin'."

Liv grabbed the phone.

"Aw fuck, really? Hey, thanks Mr. Blake. I owe ya one. Jesus."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't get smart with the cop. Act like a cute little girl, and say please and thank you. Now, where are you?"

"You know that diner off the Long Island Expressway, right before ya get to the exit that takes youse to the city? That's where we are."

"I'll be there."

***

Eddie took charge when he arrived, giving the two girls a five dollar bill and sending them into the diner to get something to eat.

The cop was trying not to act like he was thunderstruck at meeting Col. Edward M. Blake, USMC, Special Forces, S.H.I.E.L.D director of something important, in person, but he was.

Still, procedure was procedure.

"And you're her father? She's Miss Blake?"

"Nah. Juspeczyk."

"Jus-what? Canya spell that?"

"Look, ya don't need ta write it down! Her mother and me ain't married, alright? We never was, get the picture? But that's my kid, alright. Whaddya want, a blood test? Look at her. Who's she look like? Your milkman?"

"I can see the resemblance, Mr. Director."

"Yeah, well, look, mac, we're on the same side of the law, you and me, right? And my grandfather, Lieutenant Edward Morgan, you hearda him, aintcha? He was a good cop. My brother, Mickey Blake, he's a cop in Brooklyn. He's a good cop, too. And me, I'm a fuckin' public servant too, ain't I? Canya keep this quiet?"

The cop just nodded.

"You mean nobody knows that's your kid?"

"She don't even know I'm her father."

"What? Why the hell not? Why'd she call you?"

"Well, I'm still the closest thing to a father she's got. It's her mother. You know how women are. Ya do one thing to piss 'em off an' they make youse pay the rest of your life."

The cop nodded.

"They never do forget, do they? Whatever you say, Mr. Director. I'll keep this on the QT. But I'm going to have to notify Mr. Wayne. You know, that stepdaughter of his, she gets into a lot of trouble around here. Not big trouble. Just kid stuff. I know they say smart kids are always trouble, but this girl? I don't envy Mr. Wayne. No matter how much dough he's got."

"Liv Napier is trouble. She can't help it, she was born that way. She's just a kid, she'll grow out of it. Look, I'll wait with them for the wrecker. You go ahead, get your partner, and we'll forget the whole thing."

Shortly after the cop car left, the girls came out of the diner.

Eddie packed them into his car and drove back to their car.

The black and white was gone.

The three of them sat there for a few minutes, and then Liv got out, went to her car, and came back with a beer.

Eddie did a double take.

"What the fuck are you doin'?"

"I'm havin' a beer? Ya want one, Mr. Blake?"

"Yeah!"

He took the can from her.

"Hey! What the fuck!"

"Watch that mouth! If you was mine, I'd slap those words right outa your mouth! You ain't old enough to drink, kid! Jesus! Drinkin'. Speedin'. Lyin' to cops. Walkin' around with a black eye. You always got a black eye, or a split lip, or two fingers taped together. Always fightin'!"

"Yeah? So?"

"Whaddya mean, yeah, so?! I ain't even gonna ask ya what that is on your jeans. I know what that is. Didn't anybody ever tell you that teenage _boys_ are supposed to run around fightin' an' gettin' laid and fuckin' around with cars and drinkin'? You're only 14. Slow the fuck down a little, huh?"

"So what? I'm gonna be a mask, I ain't Betty Crocker. Fuckin' sue me! You ain't my father, what the fuck do you care?"

Eddie surprised both of them by giving her a light, sharp slap on the mouth.

"You watch your mouth, kid! Go sit your ass in that car, and button your lip, or I'll turn you over my fuckin' knee an' make it real hard for ya to sit down for awahile!" he barked.

Liv got in her car and closed the door.

Laurie got out of the back of Eddie's car, and got in the front.

"Holy shit, Eddie, she listened to you!"

"I can see that, Lar. This kinda shit go on a lot?"

"Awwww, don't mind her, Eddie. She's just a little drunk. It's the weekend, yunno. She always gets crazy on weekends."

"I can see that! Jesus Christ. I'd hate to be Wayne. It's only gonna get worse. You see your friend Liv, Laurie? She may be a smart girl, and I'll bet she's gonna be a helluva mask, but everything she does? That's everything you don't wanna do. She could just as easily end up dead, fuckin' wild and nuts as she is."

Laurie chewed her lip.

She had to tell somebody, it was driving her crazy.

And Eddie, he wasn't about to spill it.

"You think you can keep a secret, Eddie?"

"Sure."

"I know all about not bein' like Liv! I mean, I'm no angel, but, Eddie, you wouldn't _believe_ the things she does. I don't believe the things she does. We're still friends, me and Paulie and Liv, and Joe Mac, an' Skinny an' Big Benny, but when she goes out lookin' for trouble, we wait till she comes back. Me, I get the worst of it. Weekends, when there's no school, they're the worst. You know on Friday and Saturday nights I sleep on the couch? So I can here if she comes to the back door in the middle of the night. Drunk. Blood all over her clothes. Smellin' like beer an' cigars an' cheap aftershave. Sometimes all three. She'll show up that way at Paulie's, too. Worse, sometimes. Worse. I mean, Jesus, I'd never get into the kind of crazy shit Liv gets mixed up with. I wish they'd let her be a mask before she was 16, it would give her something good ta do."

"That's good. Because if I ever caught you drunk and beat up with some guy's load all over your pants, I'd slap your face bloody and send youse off to school with fuckin' nuns. I never seriously raised my hand to a kid before, but if you started with that shit, I'd slap it right outa youse."

Laurie gave him a funny look.

"What's it to you?"

"You got a father, kid?"

"I guess so. He's dead, though, Ma says. I never met him."

Sally told the kid Hooded Justice was her father?

That Nazi faggot sick fuck who got his jollies beating Eddie up?

He crushed the empty beer can angrily in his hand.

"That's right. You ain't even got an Uncle! Hell, I'm the closest thing you got, an' if I told your mother about this, guess where you'd go?"

The wrecker still wasn't there, but, out of a cloud of highway dust, a blue-grey Aston Martin appeared, and it seemed even before it ground to a halt, Bruce Wayne hurtled out.

"Trivelino J. Napier!" he roared.

"Can't put one over on Batman. Poor Liv. She's screwed." Laurie said.

"I feel sorry for that guy. I'm glad Crazy Jack's kid ain't my responsibility." Eddie mused.

Liv got out of her car.

"Hi, Pop." She said, airily.

Real Jimmy Cagney.

"Jee-ziz Christ, Eddie! Lookit her! If that was me, I'd be shi-crappin' my pants, an beggin' for mercy. Not Liv. She's got balls. Big brass ones." Laurie commented.

Wayne was furious, he grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her over to his car.

"Don't you 'Hi , Pop' me! Look at you! Where the hell have you been all weekend? Where do I have to goddamn go looking for you? The Bowery? The South Bronx? Look at you! You're drunk, and you've been fighting! What do I have to do? Put bars on your windows? Tie you to the bed?"

"What? What did I do?"

"What did you do? What did you do!!!!."

He shoved her in, and slammed the door.

"Hey, Eddie, can we go?"

"Yeah, sure, Lar. This is between the kid and the Bat."

***

Laurie said something about meeting Paulie at Grossmann's, so Eddie dropped her off there, and drove to Sally's place in pretty much a white-hot fury.

He didn't so much come in as break in, and Sally didn't get a chance to say a word before he laid into her.

"What the fuck kinda mother are you anyhow? What the fuck kinda woman? What the fuck are you teachin' these girls? Ya know what I did, today? Our kid called me at work, that crazy Liv Napier almost got them both killed or arrested on the fuckin' Long Island Expressway! Don't you pay no fuckin' attention where she goes? Or who she goes with! And, as for Jack's kid, she's got no Ma! You know as well as I do what happened to Merrie Napier! So what have youse been teachin' her'? You givin' her lousy fuckin' whore lessons? You gonna have both of 'em showin' their tits on stage an' suckin' guys' cocks for tips in the back room of some dive on 42nd Street, like you did, when you was their age? Jesus Christ!" he screamed.

One thing about Sal, there were no flies on her when it came to a fight.

"What the fuck gives you the right, ya shanty Mick cocksucker! When I was their age it was the God damn Depression, remember? My family needed money, an' I made a lot of it in that joint over on 42nd street! And I wasn't no whore, I never turned a trick , not once! Not fuckin' once, ya lousy cheap prick! Didn't I toss you outa this place three months ago? I got nothin' to say about Liv Napier, an' you got nothin' to say about Laurie, an' I'm trainin' them to be masks! I know about Liv! I know what she's like! What am I gonna do about it? What do you care?"

Furious, Eddie picked up a glass from the sink and threw it against the wall.

"I got a fuckin' lot to say about Laurie! GODDAMNIT, I'M HER FATHER!"

"Well she doesn't get into trouble with Liv! You try and make her desert her best friend! Or do anything else she doesn't want to. I know you're her father! I fuckin' live with her!"

"Desert? YOU DUMB WHORE, WHY DONTCHA TRY TO HELP THE KID! SHE'S GOT NO MOTHER! AND ALL LAURIE'S GOT FOR A MOTHER IS YOU! NO FUCKIN' WONDER! It's only because I am her father and I'm around here every once in a blue moon that Laurie ain't a dumb whore like you are!"

Sally had enough.

She reached her fist back across the Brooklyn Bridge, and slammed it towards Eddie's face.

He caught her fist in his hand.

Anybody else, anybody, man, woman, or child, he would have broken their arm and pulped their face, but he stopped himself from hurting her.

He threw her hand down, turned around and walked toward the door.

"Aww, fuck it! Fuck you! But lemme tell you this, Sal. Whether ya like it or not, whether ya like me or not, that's my kid! And if she starts goin' astray, I'm gonna get a judge to order a fuckin' blood test, and drag your ass into court, an' then we'll just fuckin' see who has no business with my kid!"

"Eddie, wait! Eddie!"

Eddie turned around, and saw Sally had tears in her eyes.

"Oh Christ, Sal, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Really."

"I'm so worried about her, Eddie! What if Laurie turns out like us? Bruce Wayne can't control Liv, my father couldn't control me, and your father, he couldn't control you. What if Laurie goes the way Liv has? You can take me in front of every court in the world, what are you gonna do that I can't? What am I gonna do? Lock her up and throw away the key?"

Eddie could see Sal was worried; it made him feel like shit for screaming at her.

That's the way it was with him and Sal.

One of them was always flying off the handle and pissing the other one off so much they couldn't stand to look at each other for months.

Can't live with you, can't live without you.

"Ahhh, it's not so bad, Sal. Laurie's a smart kid. She knows better. She was tellin' me all about it. How she thinks Liv's crazy and she'd never do the kind of shit she does. And as for Crazy Jack's kid, she's just a teenager. Like you say, you and me, we did some wild shit when we were teenagers, and we turned out alright. I know you try. Don't cry, Sal. You ain't no whore. I didn't mean it. I guess I was worryin' about Laurie, too. An' Liv. Ya don't unnerstand. I was in on that, with the Bat, and Crazy Jack. It's on me, too, if that kid goes bad."

"That's not why I'm cryin', ya sunnuvabitch! On top of everything I got to worry about, ya looked like you was…leavin'."

"You mean for good? Never, Sal. Never in a million years."

**III: Sally**

"…so then, Liv walks in. And me and Pauile just about shit ourselves. Sorry Ma. And then I asked her what she was doing there, didn't she get grounded, and she just laughs. She has the brake line fixed and the car's there. So I asked her again, and she said yeah, she was grounded, but what was he gonna do about it? He has work to do. She'll be back in her room by the time he gets back. You know. Mr. Wayne. She'll be at school on Monday, that's all I know. Crazy. She's crazy."

Laurie was in front of the stove, making breakfast.

"So, I see you sent Eddie home, early. He hasn't been here for what, four months? Five?"

"Six."

"You and Eddie. Is that why you never got together with him?"

"Yeah. I can't live with the lousy, violent, no -good rotten son of a bitch, and I can't live without him."

Laurie brought the bacon and eggs over to the table.

"He's a weird guy, Mom. I mean, he's mad all the time. You can tell. And you can tell he'd just kill somebody as soon as look at them. And he's a real asshole. But, then there's the way he is with his family. Even with Liv. I don't know about him, Ma."

"He's a bad man, Laurie. A very bad man. But there's good in him. And the good in him is as good as the bad is bad. You know?"

"It's your business, Mom. He's just crazy Paulie's crazy Uncle Eddie to me."

"Oh yeah? I hear you told some cop he was your father to get Liv out of trouble."

Sally wondered if she sounded too lighthearted when she spoke.

Laurie just laughed.

"Ma, honest, he was the only man I could think of who could have pulled our asses outa the fire. What are we gonna do about Liv? Even Eddie don't know what the fuck to do about her."

"I don't know, Laurie. I really don't know."

**Halloween, 1963 Bensonhurst**

**III: Sally.**

"Don't you guys think we're getting a little too old to go to the drive-in with Eddie on Halloween?" Laurie asked.

"Oh yeah. I'm 14. I'm ancient. Where's my cane? You sound like my Ma talkin' about us sleepin' over at each other's houses." Paulie joked.

"I mean it, Paulie. What do you think, Liv?"

"I think I like horror movies, I like goin' to a free show an' gettin' free food, an' I got no beef with Mr. Blake. As far as I'm concerned, he can take me to the movies if I was eighty. And you guys can stay at home."

"Why wouldja wanna go to the drive-in alone with Uncle Eddie?" Paulie asked.

"He ain't my uncle, Paulie." Liv leered.

"You are such a pervert." Laurie told her.

Paulie shrugged.

"I dunno. Uncle Eddie says he won't touch a girl unless she's over 17. Too much trouble. If you can hold onto your shirt a coupla years, I can see where you an' him would get along." Paulie opined.

"Can we change the subject. It's too sick!" Laurie complained.

"You're the fuckin' pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, tonight, ain'tcha? What, you got the curse?" Liv joked

"No! I feel stupid, going to the drive-in with my mother's…I dunno, occasional boyfriend, at our age."

"Then stay home." Paulie suggested.

"Fuck you, Paulie." Laurie told him.

"Ya know somethin', Liv? I think she is raggin' it." Paulie replied.

"Or maybe she needs to get laid. Ya know, all that hostility, a little of the ol' in an' out is good for that." Liv suggested.

"Excuse me if I'm waiting for the right guy!" Laurie protested.

"That'll take awhile." Liv chuckled.

"I met the right girl, alright. The one who said "Sure, Paulie. Why not?"

They both laughed.

Laurie was scowling and they were both laughing when the big Caddy pulled up to the curb.

Laurie and Paulie piled in the back.

"Let her sit in front with my uncle. She likes him."

"It's disgusting!"

"Hey, if she grows on him, he'll look after her. Keep her outa trouble. Better than those other guys she runs around with." Paulie opined.

They stopped off at Paulie's house, and picked up Pat, too.

Laurie asked him if he thought they were all getting too old for this, and he just looked at her like she had grown an extra head.

On the way into the drive-in, a guy in a car with some chick cut across two lanes, and cut Eddie off, and he had to slam on the brakes.

He leaned on the horn as he cranked down his window.

"Hey, ya fuckin' asshole! Whaddya think this is, fuckin' bumper cars!" he yelled.

The guy got out of the car.

He was one of these greaser dudes who had not got the message that shit was over and done with.

Eddie just laughed, and he got out, too.

Laurie couldn't help it, she laughed, too, when she saw the look on this kid's face.

"Oh no! No, I couldn't. It'd be too fuckin' easy. Hey, girls! C'mon out here and beat this punk into the ground."

Laurie and Liv both got out.

"What the fuck is this?" the guy asked.

"Beatin' up a little punk motherfucker like you is beneath me. Actually, it's beneath these girls, too, but they need the practice."

"What, ya want me to fight a coupla cunts?"

Paulie shut the back door.

"What did you call me? I'll fuckin' cripple you!" Laurie insisted.

Liv slammed the front door.

"You motherfucker! I'm gonna beat you bloody, throw you down and fuck you stupid, right in front of your girl! And you better be able to get it up, or I'll cut your dick off!" Liv erupted.

They both launched themselves at the guy, and he got back in his car, and fled.

"What a fuckin' pussy. Hey, kid, you don't really do shit like that do you? If ya do, cut it out, right now. Because that's fuckin' sick." Eddie told Liv.

"Naaah. I just like to get 'em goin'. Confuses the shit outa them."

Liv and Pat and Paulie went to the drive-in with Eddie every week, but Laurie was only supposed to go when Eddie and her mom were speaking.

Actually, she went every week, too.

In spite of her protests to the contrary.

The first movie was pretty dumb, and they laughed and ate through it, all of them stuffing themselves with junk food like popcorn and hot dogs and hamburgers and Coke were being outlawed, tomorrow.

The second movie, called _Black Sunday_, was actually pretty scary, and they were all real quiet.

The third movie, _Blood Feast_, was really, really, really disgusting.

Paulie actually ran out of the car and came back from the bathroom looking green.

"It's bullshit, Paulie. It don't look like the real thing at all." his Uncle told him.

"It's pretty sick, anyway." Pat volunteered.

"I wonder what kinda animal's tongue that was. Whaddya think, Paulie? Pig? Sheep? Cow?" Liv suggested.

Paulie ran out the door again, with his hand over his mouth.

"Quit that shit." Eddie told her.

"What?"

"Just fuckin' quit it."

"Okay, Mr. Blake."

The last movie was from a couple of years ago, but it was a pretty good one, _Curse of the Werewolf_.

Eddie had to stop the car for Paulie to be sick again, on the way home, and they stopped off at an all night drugstore in Manhattan to get Paulie some Pepto-Bismol.

Laurie already knew she and Liv were staying at Paulie's house, because her mother went to a Halloween party with Uncle Hollis.

While they were trying to scare up some midnight horror movies on the TV, Laurie went downstairs, to get something to drink from the fridge, and she saw Eddie leaving, with his mask costume on.

"You gonna try and get back into Ma's good graces, Eddie?" she asked.

"Yeah. Crazy, I guess."

"You in love with her? Ma, I mean?"

"That's what makes me crazy."

**IV: Sally**

Halloween marked two months without that son of a bitch Eddie Blake.

She had spent far too much time with him over the summer, before they had a falling out in August, she was letting him come over two or three nights a week.

Well, that was all over, because for the last three months, Sally had been tentatively seeing Hollis Mason.

This bullshit with Eddie, it had to end.

On Halloween, he invited her to go to the party at the Avengers Mansion that Tony Stark threw.

They were the newest mask team on the block, and after being joined by a newly-discovered Captain America, as well as Thor, they were starting to get noticed.

Officially, it was the Avengers Halloween party, but every mask in the tri-state area got invited, and Sally was going with Hollis Mason.

"Wow, Sally, is that your old costume?"

"You bet, Hollis. My figure's all I got goin' for me, so I've always kept it up. You don't look so bad, yourself."

"I feel like an idiot in this get-up. I guess I'm just a crazy old man."

"Old? C'mon, Hollis, we're not even fifty, yet."

But that was Hollis, for you.

Forty-seven, going on ninety.

Eddie had once said that Hollis probably had his last hard-on during the first Eisenhower administration, and Sally was beginning to think he was right.

She had made a couple of half-joking passes at Hollis, and he jokingly turned her down for all of them.

But, she was forty-three, after all, and maybe Hollis had a point.

She had started running around with men when she was 13, she was a lot more like Liv Napier than she wanted to admit, and, it hadn't done her a lot of good in her life.

Maybe it was time to grow up, settle down, retire her number, thirty years was a very long career.

Sally was having a pretty nice evening, all in all.

She had a talk with Bruce about Liv's progress through the parts of her training she was handling, and she and Hollis had dinner at the same table as Lois and Clark.

Halfway through the evening, she got to meet the host, hotshot young mask Tony Stark, otherwise known as Iron Man.

He reminded her an awful lot of Errol Flynn.

He was handsome and dashing with the same kind of impish blue eyes, but he also had this very James Bond air about him; a cocky, good-looking kid who both had it and knew it.

He wasn't in costume, he had on a white tux with a black tie, and showed up with the suavest of manners to light her cigarette, and hand her a fresh drink.

"You know, of all the people I invited, Miss Jupiter, you're the one I was hoping to meet the most."

He wasn't talking to her like she was some old bag, he was talking to her like she was a woman.

And after three months of celibacy, that was something sally couldn't ignore.

"Really? Was I your hero when you were a little boy?" Sally asked.

She realised she was flirting with him, but, she couldn't help it.

"I had your poster on my wall. If you'll forgive me for saying so, I had such a crush on you."

"Honey, really, I'm old enough to be your mother."

"You don't look anything like my mother."

Sally could see a soft, bluish glow coming from under his shirt.

"Don't look now, kid, but you're all lit up."

"Miss Jupiter, looking at you, I'm sure I'm not the only man in the room who is. Would you like to dance?"

Sally realised she should have said no, but, where was the harm in it?

"Why not? And you can call me Sally."

He was a great dancer, too, and after they danced, what was wrong with letting him get her another drink?

"So, this glowing disc, you got that stamped right into your chest, huh?" Sally asked him.

"Yes, I do."

The kid was good, he picked up on her little subtle hint, unbuttoned his jacket, and also a button or two in the middle of his shirt.

He showed her the device that kept him alive, but also a good piece of his hairy, muscular chest.

"That's really something." She said.

"I'm glad you think so. I'd love to talk to you all night, Sally, but I've got a whole ballroom full of guests. Let me give you my card."

After he buttoned up, he got a pen and a card from his tux jacket's inside pocket, and wrote something on the back of it.

"That's my personal number. I'd like to get together with you, sometime. You've been at this a lot longer than I have; I'm sure you have a lot you can teach me."

_You bet your ass, kid._

"I'm sure I do. It was nice to meet you. I hope to see you again, soon."

"So do I."

He tipped her a wink, and an in like Flynn grin, and they went their separate ways.

Sally tucked the card into her bustier, and went back to sit with Hollis.

This whole giving up screwing thing was going to be harder than she thought.

"So, what's out young host like?" Hollis asked.

"Oh, he's a nice boy."

"Well, it's getting late. Are you ready to go, yet?"

Sally looked at the clock on the far wall.

"Hollis, it's only 9:30. But, if you want to go…"

"No, that's OK, Sal. I trust you here with all our friends and associates. But this old man has had enough excitement for tonight. Besides, I think I'd better get Byron's car keys and take him home, he looks like he's ready to fall over."

"Hollis, are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure, Sal. You never get out. Laurie's at Edie's house, you might as well enjoy yourself. I'll call you, real soon."

That was Hollis for you.

Not only did he leave at 9:30, he didn't even insist she go with him.

Nonetheless, it continued to be a nice party until about 12:30, when disaster struck.

"Boy, Sal, it's a good thing ya didn't go to the drive-in. They put this one movie on, Jesus, it was like bein' in a fuckin' war zone. Poor Paulie musta tossed his cookies four times."

There he was, and in his fucking costume, yet, with his goddamn guns on.

Disaster on two legs.

"Eddie, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Makin' sure Howard Stark's horny little bastard kid don't go home t'night with my date. That's right kid. Not tonight."

Eddie made eye contact with Tony Stark, who only grinned, and continued on his way.

"Eddie, I am not your fucking date!"

"Well, ya oughtta be somebody's date. What, youse came alone?"

"I came here with Hollis. And he…"

"Left early because it was past his bedtime? So, how's that goin', anyway? I'll betcha the Scoutmaster's the last of the red hot lovers, huh? Just thinkin' about him gets ya all hot an' bothered, huh?"

"You're such a pig, Eddie. Our relationship has nothing to do with all of that. And thinking about Hollis does not get me all hot and bothered."

"Oh yeah? Then what are you all hot and bothered about? I guess it must be me."

"Who says I am?"

"Sal, it's me you're talkin' to. I'm the guy who's name you're screamin' when you're tearin' up the sheets. I know."

Sally angrily stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray at the table.

"Leave me alone, Eddie. I'm all done with all that, now."

"Oh yeah? What's this, then?"

Before she could stop him, Eddie had seen the little sliver of white against her cleavage, and grabbed Tony Stark's card.

He looked at it, laughed uproariously, and put it back.

"I guess you an' Wonderboy are just gonna talk shop, huh? Boy, is he in for it. Little bastard better eat his fuckin' Wheaties."

Sally thought about slapping him in the face, or throwing her drink at him, but that just would have made him laugh harder.

"You the boss of me now, Eddie? Is that what this is all about?"

"Sal, look. I don't care if you play house with Hollis Mason. An' I don't care if you come up here and show Wonderboy some new tricks. All I care about is that I'm the guy who goes home with you, tonight." Eddie told her.

Sally sighed.

"Eddie, you make it so hard for me to be good."

"That's because youse makes it so good for me to be hard."

***

Sally yawned, lazily, and stretched, her head against Eddie's chest, watching the plume of cigar smoke lazily float towards the windowsill, where the grinning electric plastic pumpkin twinkled in the dark.

"Ya know somethin', Eddie?"

"Huh?"

"I think I'm gonna quit tellin' myself I'm all done with you."

"Ya can't be all done with me, Sal. We got a kid together. So, as long as ya can't be all done with me, ya might as well enjoy it."

"But I almost made it, this time. Poor Hollis."

"Poor Hollis, nothin'! He was prob'ly sweatin' it, thinkin', Jeeziz, this broad wants me to deliver the goods, and I ain't used my dick except to piss with it since 1955! I gotta go see a doctor. This way, when ya go back to havin' lunch, and tea, an' talkin' about the ol' days an' shit, he'll feel a whole lot better."

"You don't have to make fun of him, Eddie. Some people just aren't very interested in sex."

Eddie put out his cigar, and then reached over and rolled one of her nipples between his thumb and his forefinger.

Sally gasped, in surprise and pleasure.

Eddie laughed, a low chuckle, thick with lust.

"Bet you're glad you ain't one of them, huh?"

"You bet your ass I am."


	4. The Third Man

**Chapter Four: The Third Man**

**New York City, 1956**

**I: Eddie**

It was morning in Bensonhurst.

At the Blake residence, which had been occupied by various members of that illustrious Brooklyn family, since 1938, Edie Blake was cooking breakfast for the current configuration.

In 1954, when Jimmy moved out, and it was just Eddie and Allie living there, Eddie invited Edie and Aggie, their common-law husband Ivan, and his two nephews, Edie's son Paulie and Aggie's son, Pat, to get out of East New York, which was going downhill, fast, and move into the house in Bensonhurst.

Eddie had pretty much moved into his Manhattan apartment, full-time in 1955, when Allie went off to NYU.

But, Allie moved back home after a semester in the dorms, and Eddie was still coming there every night after work to change out of his costume and take a shower, and he usually stayed at least one night a week, and weekends.

Just to keep an eye on all of them.

Not to mention that ever since she was a child, Eddie's daughter with Sally Jupiter who, despite her resemblance to him and lack of resemblance to Rolf Mueller, her purported daddy, was a regular guest at the Blake homestead.

Edie was Laurie's babysitter.

She and Eddie both refrained from mentioning to Sally that Eddie still lived in the house when Sally started bringing Laurie around, somewhere in '50.

At first, Sally trusted Larry with "his" daughter when she had to go out of town, but when he proved unable to cope, if Sally was flying out to the West Coast to talk to Paramount, or Universal, she left Laurie with her aunts, and her beloved cousins Paulie and Pat, where she knew the kid would be safe.

And, if Eddie so happened to be in his own house when his own daughter was visiting, well, why was that a crime?

So, on that morning, the family assembled around the table, and although Edie was cooking, her brother had something to say about it.

"Jesus, don't put so much fuckin' butter in the pan! What the hell you gotta use alla that butter, for? You're gonna make everything too fuckin' greasy!" he was complaining.

"Don't do that, Edie, Jesus, my stomach is bad enough this morning! I got mid-terms. I'm a wreck. The goddamn smell of the goddamn food is making me sick." Allie piped in.

"I want Froot Loops. I hate fried eggs." Paulie volunteered.

"All I ever get is Froot Loops. My mom can't cook. And Larry, he's an asshole." Laurie complained.

"Laurie! No swearing at the table!" Edie told her.

"Since when?" Allie snorted.

"She's right. That fuckin' pencil-necked prick bastard! He is a fuckin' asshole! What good is he? He can't even take care of the kid for two nights? And he never takes her anywhere. Some father that asshole is." Eddie agreed.

"He's not my real father." Laurie said.

"You bet he ain't." Eddie snorted.

"Eddie!"

"What? The kid just said it, I didn't1"

"Edie, could you hurry up with eggs? I have job to get to." Ivan asked.

"You have a job? You? What's goin' on? You guys short on money?" Eddie asked.

"Not regular job. Salvage job at docks. Cash under table. Big money. Goes right into box under floorboards and fuck IRS."

Meanwhile, Pat was looking at his food like it was green.

"That's more like it, Ivan. Pat, what's the matter with your plate?"

"This bacon isn't even dead yet, Uncle Eddie, for cryin' out loud! I can't eat this."

"I'll eat it. I'm hungry." Paulie said.

"Don't eat that! It's raw! Edie, what the fuck?"

Edie threw down the spatula, and sat down.

"Okay, Eddie, you got a fuckin' problem? You cook."

"Good idea. Allie, get Paulie his Froot Loops. Whaddya you want? Toast and four Alka-Selzers?"

"Yeah."

Breakfast went on, and Pat and Paulie left for school, and Ivan gave Allie a ride into town, and Edie did the dishes, and Eddie wondered why Laurie was just sitting there, playing with her cold food.

"What's the matter, honey? Don't you feel good?" Edie asked.

"I don't wanna go to school. And I'm not hungry. I dunno. I miss my Ma."

"She'll be home, tomorrow, Laurie. Do you want to go home with your Daddy?"

"Larry's not my Daddy! And if I never saw that jerk again, I'd be happy!" Laurie exclaimed.

That was enough to make Eddie take notice.

If that fucking little bastard has touched my kid, I'll rip him to pieces with my bare hands.

"Why? Is he mean to you? Does he hurt you? You can tell us, Laurie. We'll tell you Ma, and she'll make sure nobody hurts you, anymore."

Laurie rolled her eyes.

"Larry doesn't have the balls to hurt anybody. He's just a jerk. He yells at me all the time, and he never dose anything. I mean all the other kids' fathers take them places. Larry never does anything. And whoever that guy is that's my real dad, I never even met him. He skated on Ma and me a long time ago. I got a raw deal. It's lousy." Laurie complained.

"Well, where do ya wanna go, Lar? The zoo? Prospect Park? Down the street to get a hot dog? The drive-in?"

"Yeah! Places like that."

"I can take youse. I'm always takin' Paulie, or Pat, someplace. What's another kid, more or less?"

"Eddie—"

"Shut up, Edie."

Laurie thought about it.

"What if they ain't goin?"

"Then you an' me can go."

"Is that okay, Edie? Ma says to listen to you when she's not around. " Laurie asked.

Edie knew goddamn well that it would not be okay with Sally.

But she knew her brother, she knew him better than anybody on God's Green Earth.

She knew what he'd gone through, since he was about Laurie's age, trying to keep her, and Aggie, and the little kids safe.

He might have been a lot of things, but he wasn't the kind of man who would ever do anything bad to anyone of his blood, let alone his own daughter, and goddammit, he deserved a chance to be some kind of father to Laurie.

The little girl shouldn't have to suffer for the mistakes her father had made.

Or her mother.

"Sure, Laurie. You go ahead. You can listen to Eddie, too, when ma's not around. He's my brother, he'll look after you as good as I would."

"Really! I can go! Neat? So, where are we gonna go today, Eddie?"

"It's rainin'. We'll go to the movies. Wait a minute, kid. Put ya coat on. It ain't too warm today, either."

**New York City, 1965**

**I: Eddie**

The more he thought about it, the better of an idea it was.

Of course, Sal wasn't going to like it.

They had made a big deal of it, reporters everywhere, and all Eddie had said, offhand was that when it came to cars he liked Caddys and Lincolns, but when you were talking about trucks, he'd go with Ford.

Then he said something about his father's old Ford V-8.

Those were some of his only good memories of his father.

Despite what he told Sal about not knowing how to drive, Eddie's father had him behind the wheel as soon as his feet could reach the pedals, so he was driving from the time he was seven or eight.

He used to drive the Old Man around town, while he shook people down in the back of the car.

They'd stop at a gas station so the Old Man could wipe the blood off the seats, and he'd get Eddie a candy bar.

A couple of times they were on the run from the cops, or from some other hoods, and the Old Man was shooting out the window with a Tommy gun, which is great fun when you're a kid. It was better than having John Dillinger for a father.

The least he could do for his kid, who was about to start her tenure as a mask, was teach her how to drive like one.

Of course, when you're a mask, somebody's always trying to pimp you off, and he would have told the corporate pencil-necks from Ford Motor Company to fuck off, but the car they wanted to give him, it looked like something a kid would like.

It was a Saturday morning, and when he got to Sal's place, Laurie was sitting on the front steps, smoking a cigarette, and waiting for somebody.

She came up to the shiny red new '66 Mustang with eyes as big as saucers.

"You like this thing, kid?"

"Like it? Jesus, what a car!"

Eddie got out.

"Yeah, well it's too small for me. You got your permit, yet?"

Laurie rolled her eyes.

"Uh-huh. Ma's teachin' me to drive. She's a lousy driver."

"I know. That's why I'm takin' over. So, ya like this car? If ya like it, it's yours."

"Eddie, I can't pay for it."

"So? They gave it to me. Even if they didn't, you think I need money from a 15 year old kid? Title's in the glove compartment. Made out to you."

"But Ma has to sign for it. I'm too young to have a car without her permission."

"Don't worry about it. I fixed it for ya. Here, take the keys. Let's see if you're a better driver than your Ma."

**II: Sally**

First, Sally saw the car.

Then, she looked at the title.

Then Laurie told her Eddie was going to teach her to drive.

The Silk Spectre hit the roof.

"Laurel Jane Juspeczyk, you are not keeping that car! And that no-good lousy Mick sunnuvabitch is not going to teach you to drive!"

"I am so keeping the car, Ma! And Eddie's a lot better driver than you are! Jesus, you act like he's some fuckin' guy that walked in off the street! I mean, you've known him since, like, the goddamn Depression, and I've known him, like, all my fucking life!"

"You have not! I wasn't dumb enough to bring him around here until you were 11!"

Laurie gave her one of her most infuriating smart-ass Eddie looks.

"What are you talking about? Ma, his sister was my babysitter. His nephew is my best friend. You used to drop me off at Edie's house all the time, when I was little, and you were trying to do, movies, or whatever. That used to be Eddie's house. He, like, lived there when I was little. He still practically lives there, for Christ's sake."

That was when the walls fell in on Sally.

All the sudden, the car and the driving lessons didn't mean a goddamn thing.

She tried to play it off.

"Go to your room!"

"Why? I didn't do anything!"

"Goddammit, Laurie, I told you to go to your room!"

Laurie gave her an odd look, and huffed out of the kitchen.

"I am not giving _my_ car up and _you _can't make me! Liv's had her permit since she was 13 and she has _three_ cars! I'll be goddamned if I'm not gonna get _one_!" she announced.

But Sally was already on the phone.

"Yeah, whaddya want?"

"Edie?"

"Oh, hiya Sal. What's doin?"

"Edie, how often did Eddie come around when you used to babysit Laurie?"

"What?"

"How often—"

"Yeah, I heard you, Sal, it's just a funny question. I dunno. We still call this place Eddie's house. He comes here every night he works, to change out of his costume and get his car. I mean, he's got his own key. I'd say, Jesus, when the kids were little, he'd come over at least three, maybe four afternoons a week. He useta stay here on weekends, then, too. Sometimes he still does. And then there was the drive-in on Thursday, that was up until what, a few months ago? Alla time, Sal. I mean, this is his house, and I'm his twin sister. Alla the family gathers here, yunno?"

Sally bit her lip.

"Yeah. I guess they would. Hey, thanks, Edie. I'll, ah. I'll call you later."

Sally hung up the phone, put her head in her hands, and cried.

All those years.

All those years he was going behind her back, and spending time with Laurie.

No wonder she didn't seem to care when he started coming around here, she was already used to him.

And it was my fault.

I could have got her a babysitter to come here.

Or taken her anywhere.

But I wanted her to have her family, to know them.

They're good people.

Why didn't I think, that's Eddie's house, of course he's going to go there?

Especially to see his daughter.

How many ice cream cones did he buy her?

How many walks did he take her for in Prospect Park?

How many pony rides and slices of pizza?

Trips to the zoo?

To the movies?

Larry ignored her.

He never took her anywhere.

Did Eddie make sure she had her hat on, and her coat buttoned on cold days, and hold an umbrella over her in the rain?

Did he hold her hand so she wouldn't wander off?

Maybe, when she got tired, he'd carry her.

Sally left the kitchen and went to the foot of the stairs.

"Laurie! Come down here for a minute."

She did.

"When you were little and you used to stay with Edie, did Eddie come and take you and Paulie and Pat places?"

"Sometimes."

"Did you ever go places with him, alone?"

"Yeah, Ma, I did. So what? I mean, Larry never paid any attention to me, and I felt lousy about it. Jesus, I mean, Eddie's a weird guy, he's not some kind of creep, or anything. I mean, we'd go for walks in the park, and I'd get a hot dog and an ice cream cone, or a slice of pizza, and then we went back to Edie's. When I was real little, if it rained, he'd carry me back to the car. You know. Just like a regular guy. Paulie, he was there a lot, too. And Pat. Liv too, sometimes. When we were really, really little, like when we were five, she'd run away all the time. She could run like hell, even then. And we'd run too, and make him chase us. Kid stuff. Why?"

"Nothing. I guess it's just you being old enough to drive, it makes me all sentimental. You don't have to stay in your room. Here's the title to your car, back. But, no driving it on your own until you get your licence."

"Thanks, Ma. Uh, so, Liv's comin' over in about half an hour, and me an' her an Paulie, we're gonna go to the movies or hang out at Grossmann's, or something. I'll be home by 10:30, like usual."

"That's fine, honey."

After Laurie left, Sally sat down and cried for a long time.

She was still crying when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hiya Sal. You mad at me?"

"Mad at you? Mad at you! You fuckin' son of a bitch bastard, you been going behind my back all her life, haven't you?"

"Kinda hard for me to be goin' behind your back when you drop the kid off at my house for my sister to babysit her and my nephew is one of her best friends."

"What did I do it all for, then, Eddie?"

"Because you didn't want her to grow up watchin' you an' me fight. Which we woulda. Lotsa reasons, Sal. You were right, yunno."

"Yeah, well, you could have asked me about the goddamn car! And on the title, right where it says for the parent or guardian to sign, there's your name!"

"Yeah? So? I am her father, so what? Sal, you put my name on her goddamn birth certificate, for Chrissake. I mean, it's a matter of public fuckin' record."

Sally sighed, deeply.

"I don't know why I even try. I don't have to wait for you to screw me over, I do it to my fucking self. I have to go, now. I'm having dinner with Hollis and his successor. Dan Something."

"The Scoutmaster an' the Boy Scout, huh? What are ya doin' after?"

"Washin' my hair."

"Can I come over an' help?"

"I'm hanging up on you, now, Eddie, you fuckin' sunnuvabitch!"

When Sally got home that night, she didn't see Eddie's car in the immediate vicinity, but he was there, anyway, waiting for her in the kitchen.

She didn't throw him out.

What would be the point?

**Upper East Side, Manhattan, 1966. The Comedian's Apartment**

**II: Eddie**

In the years right after the war, when he was still a young pup, Eddie woke up on a lot of Saturday mornings naked and face down somewhere that wasn't his bed with a terrible hangover and no memory at all of how he had gotten there.

These days, it was something that happened to him two, three times a year, tops, but, what the hell, sometimes a man has to have a good time.

However, awakening to the sound of screaming women, face down on the floor in the can, Eddie realised he may have had a little bit too much fun.

As he tried to become ambulatory, the screaming became more clear.

"…fucking put it down, you dumb cunt, or I'll put my foot right up your ass…"

"…owww, you're hurting me…"

"…never hit a woman before, but I'll start with you…"

Something broke, there were a couple of shrill screams and he heard the front door slam.

"Jesus Christ! Eddie? Eddie, are you in here, someplace?"

Sally opened up the bathroom door just as he was staggering to his feet.

"Big night, huh, Eddie?"

"I guess so, Sal. What was all that about?"

"Oh, nothing. I came here to have an important discussion with you about our daughter and found three broads robbing you blind. Three, Eddie? What the hell were you doing with three?"

Eddie got in the shower, and turned the tap to cold.

He leaped out after a minute or two.

"The same thing ya do with one. Whaddya mean, our daughter? She's only 'our daughter' when somethin's fucked up."

"Things are fucked up, alright! They are really fucked up! What the fuck was I doin' yellin' at you at that meeting? Like you'd make a play for your own kid! I should have been yellin' at that big blue bastard! She wants to move in with Dr. Manhattan. She says they're in love. Yeah, right. I know what that sunnuvabitch has been into. And it ain't love, the dirty bastard!"

"WHAT THE FUCK?"

Eddie almost killed himself getting out of the wet shower stall.

"That's what I said when I found out! I didn't even know they were dating! I mean she told me she had a boyfriend, a steady boyfriend but I assumed he was somebody a little younger! And a color other than blue! And when I insisted she produce this guy, so I could meet him, she drops the bomb on me! So, can you think of a way to kill the son of a bitch? Because if you can, I'm up for it! That big blue nuclear reactor has been at my little girl!"

Now, Laurie was 16, and a mask, and when Eddie was 16 he was in charge of his whole family and a mask, and when Sally was 16 she was holding down two jobs, and Eddie's mother had been 15 when she married Mickey Blake, who was 20, but it was all a different story when it came to a man, and that man in particular having been at his little girl.

"I wish I knew a way, Sal! I'd do it!"

"What are we going to do?"

Eddie just looked at her.

"Jesus H. Christ! For 16 years, you do everything you can to keep me away from my own kid, and it's like pullin' teeth what time I do get with her, and then you went and told her about the Trophy room, so now she fuckin' hates me, an' now, all the fuckin' sudden, it's we?"

"What did you want me to do? Let her read it in Hollis' book? And yeah, it's we!"

"Well, if it's we, it's fucking we, then. Is she home?"

"Yes."

"Just lemme put my pants on, and we'll go."

Out of all the kids, the only one who was ever any trouble was sweet little Allie.

She was a sweet little girl until her red hair kicked in when she was 15, and then she started going crazy all over town.

Boys, booze, reefer, fast cars, the whole nine yards.

Eddie barged into her History class at FDR High one afternoon, picked her up, and carried her out the door, and to his car, with her kicking and yelling and swearing all the way.

Once he locked her in the car, and started driving, he told her the truth about her father, about how he was, and how he died, something only Ruthie, the oldest of the little kids could really recall with any clarity, and the others had almost forgotten.

Allie was a baby when their father died; she had no memory of him at all.

He dropped her and a suitcase full of her stuff off at a boarding school for girls out on Long Island; it was run by Russian and Polish nuns.

After six months, he let her come home at nights, and drove her back and forth for the next year.

Her last year, he trusted her to drive.

Allie grew up to become one of the toughest, smartest, most ruthless New York City lawyers in the history of New York City.

She never got married, never had any kids, and never moved in with any of the guys she was seeing, but she lived in the same building as Eddie, and was the go-to lawyer for every mask in New York.

If Laurie was going to start trouble, the school on Long Island was still there.

Standing there in Sal's kitchen, she was giving him that same surly fuck you kind of look her Aunt Allie had.

"Now you listen to me, Laurel Jane, and you fuckin' listen, good! You're 16 years old. You ain't old enough to spit in the street unless your Ma says you can. You sure as shit ain't old enough to shack up with a guy who's only six years younger than me, an' you'll quit school over my dead body! Now, Sal and me, we ain't dumb enough to tell youse that you can't see that big, blue cradle-robbing sunnunvabitch, because we know your mind's made up. But you ain't goin away on little trips to DC, and you ain't quittin' school, and you ain't movin' noplace!"

She looked at him like he was out of his mind.

"What gives you the right to say shit about it, Eddie? You think because you and my mother have a history, a dirty, sick history, that gives you a say over me?" she demanded.

"You wanna know what gives me the right? Listen, kid, you and me, we both know goddamn well what gives me the motherfuckin' right! You looked in a mirror, lately? When ya did, didja see anybody who looked like Rolf Mueller? We both know why you're so fuckin' mad at me, cupcake, and it don't have shit to do with somethin' that happened with me an' your Ma a long time ago before you was even born." Eddie shot back.

Sally sucked in her breath, sharply, and Laurie looked dumbfounded.

Eddie had just put words to her deepest, secret fears.

_Laurel Jane, there has to be a reason why Eddie Blake's been playing Daddy to you for most of your life._

Laurie was suddenly speechless.

"Do I have your attention, kiddo? Good. Glad to see you're listenin' I put sixteen years into you, kid, an' I ain't done yet! That pencil-necked asshole who lived with you was never any kinda father to you, and I'm the closest thing you got, whether you like me, or not! So you're gonna do what your Ma tells you, an' what I tell you, or you're goin' to that convent school on Long Island, one fuckin' way!" Eddie finished.

"But I love him!" Laurie shot back.

"Love? Love! Bullshit! I loved your Ma, and she loved me, an' look where it got us! Love's the worst fuckin' reason in the world ya could ever do anything! I'm gonna go have a little talk with that cradle-robbin' blue bastard! You better fuckin' well be here when I get back. Because I'll fuckin' find you an' bring you back, and I don't give a shit of I hafta call up half the fuckin' Marines and drive the goddamn tank, myself! "

Eddie stormed out of the kitchen.

"Ma, will you really send me to school with the nuns?"

"In a heartbeat, cupcake."

"What if I escape?"

"Then you better hope Eddie finds you before I do."

**Dr. Manhattan's New York Laboratory**

The Comedian burst into Dr. Manhattan's lab, practically foaming at the mouth.

"Woops! Time for my coffee break." Liv Napier, the good doctor's student intern, insisted.

She made an attempt to leave in a big hurry, but Eddie grabbed her arm along the way.

Almost twenty years of being Batman didn't make Bruce Wayne's hair turn grey, but since his stepdaughter turned 13 and puberty hit her so hard she hit the whole of New York City back, he was getting streaks of grey around the temples.

Liv was Laurie's best girlfriend, and Laurie could have stood to be tough as Liv, and as streert-smart, and as good of a budding detective, but everything else she did was every man's nightmare of an out-of-control teenage daughter.

Hell, Eddie had to keep his distance from her and the yawning black hole of total fucking chaos that was her life despite promises he made to Jack and Bruce, and poor dead Merrie,ever since she put her fast little hands all over the fly of his pants at the drive-in a couple years back, with a hell of a lot more authority than you'd think a 14-year old girl would have.

Sure, he was the only one who was holding out because she was too young, but he owed Jack and Merrie Napier more than to screw their crazy daughter in the back of a Buick on a drunken Saturday night before she was even 18 years old.

But sometimes, the kid was so out of control, he had to step in, and with Laurie on the brink of disaster, he was suddenly sensitive to what a huge fucking train wreck Jack and Merrie's smart, spunky, pretty little Irsih girl daughter's life had become.

What the hell, he might as well hit them all in one day.

He grabbed Liv by the arm, and her body jumped like he had electric current running out of him.

"Yeah, Mr. Blake?"

Ostermann looked amused.

Yeah, Eddie, that's why you don't stand next to this fire. That crazy little train wreck just wants to rub her big tits and her burning bush all over you until you rip her clothes off and fuck her into next week.

And when she was a goddamn child, it was weird and sick and unthinkable, but she ain't a little girl, anymore, is she?

Eddie let go of her.

"Not so fast, there, Bonnie Parker. What's that on your pants?"

"It's blood. Occupational hazard, Mr. Blake."

"Uh-huh. I wasn't talkin' about the blood, kid"

"Oh. That."

The kid grinned at him, knowingly.

"Well, that's an occupational hazard, too." Liv replied, and winked.

Eddie wasn't having any of it.

Not today.

"Ya know somethin', kid? It ain't cute, and you an' your hey sailor, buy me a drink an' I'll suck your dick in the john routine ain't funny, either? Jesus, you're an educated broad, from a good family, and ya got no shortage of money, an' a good home. So why the fuck d'you live like a stew bum under a fuckin' bridge, an' put it on like you're some kinda shanty Irish bar whore? Ostermann, don't fuckin' sit there like a big blue paperweight, am I right?"

Dr. Manhattan cleared his throat.

"I have to agree with the Comedian. You've gone far beyond youthful high spirits, Trivelino. You're flirting with disaster. Debilitating alcoholism. Unwanted pregnancy. Dangerous back-alley abortions…"

"…gettin' beat to shit an' gang-banged by a bunch of lowlives in some dive who'll leave youse for dead in the gutter…" Eddie added.

"…incurable veneral diseases. Crippled for life in a car accident…" Jon continued.

"…end up kicked outa every mask team in New York, failin' outa college, a mush-brained toothless old whore draped over a bar on the Lower East Side singin' "Whiskey in the Jar" to nobody in particular." Eddie finished.

"Jesus. You guys are sure layin' it on thick, tonight." Liv said.

"Yeah, well, me an' your father an' your stepfather, we didn't jump through the fuckin' hoops we jumped through so you could grow up to be a drunken' fuckin' grease monkey who's fought half the lowlives in the city an' fucked the other half. You're puttin' on a costume, now, kid, and you already got your ass handed to you, big time, fuckin' twice in your first year. That oughta be tellin' you somethin'. Like maybe you should get your fuckin' shit together, sweetheart. You better listen to Bruce, and to Jack, because if you don't, someday you'll have to listen to me, an' I ain't buyin' your poor me act. I'll make you toe the fuckin' line."

Liv looked at him, blinked, and then that evil, cocky little smile crawled across her face, again.

"How you gonna do that, Mr. Blake?" she asked.

Eddie really felt like hitting her, at that point, and gave her a murderous look.

The kid didn't look scared, she smiled at him, again, like if he wanted to fight, that was okay with her, too.

"Just get the fuck out here, alright? Make tracks. I'll deal with you, later."

"Whatever you say, Mr. Blake."

Liv made herself scarce, and the Comedian whirled on Dr. Manhattan, hitting him with the full force of his rage

"Now, you and me gotta talk, Ostermann! You're goddamn lucky I can't kill you, you motherfucker! Because if I could, I woulda ripped your fuckin' spine out by now!" Eddie raged.

"Please, calm down. I expected you to be angry, Comedian. After all, she's your daughter, and I'm almost the same age as you are. But, I assure you, my intentions are honourable. I love Laurie. Very much."

That slowed Eddie down, but just a little bit.

"How did you know who the fuck I am to her?"

Dr. Manhattan shrugged.

"It's hard to explain. But I will keep the secret. Even from her."

"Uh-huh. Sure. You got honourable intentions. You want her to quit school and leave home at 16 and shack up with you, that's real fuckin' honourable, you lousy fuckin' prick!"

"What?"

He actually looked shocked.

"I most certainly do not! I assure you, Comedian, I would never do a thing like that! Laurie's much too young to leave home, and…quit school! Quit school! That would be horrible! Where did she get such an idea? I would never, ever suggest that laurie leave home and…quit school!"

Eddie almost laughed at the way Dr. Manhattan talked about quitting school like most people would talk about committing an axe murder.

"I assure you, I only want to be allowed to see Laurie. Exclusively, of course. I am not a polygamist, by nature, and I have only been in love with a woman once before in my , when I met Laurie, I realised that, perhaps, I had never really been in love at all. I don't have any other women, and I don't intend to get involved with anyone else. I am not that kind of man. I would also like to work with her, as a mask, to keep her safe, out there, on the street.I give you my word, Comedian, I never induced her to leave home or quit school. I would never encourage her, to do crazy things like that!" he protested.

"You don't have to, Doc. She's a young girl. They fall for a guy, they go fuckin' goofy in their heads."

"Trivelino is sixteen. She's not… goofy in her head."

"She ain't? You been asleep for a year? Three weeks out, the kid gets her face smashed in by three punks with a piece of rebar who got a nice rape and beating planned for her. What does she do, then? Retire to your lab, like a smart girl? Fuck no! She blows two of them away with her guns, and beats the other one to death with the rebar, ties up her face and crawls for help. Her jaw's still wired shut when she goes back on the street with a nice fresh tattoo, which is like the fifth or sixth she's got. An' she came to Laurie's first Watchmen meeting drunk two days after takin' a bullet in the guts. You were there. You saw her. Which she took halfway through a fire-fight with a gang in the South Bronx, and didn't even realise her vest hadn't completely stopped it until after the fight was over. Then, not a week later, she puts on a fuckin' disguise and goes after Veidt in an alley because she don't like what he said about her father and the Bat, and manages to give him a shiner. You're damn right she ain't goofy in the head, Liv's plain old fuckin' nuts! She's probably out there pourin' whiskey into her coffee, an' tryin' to get the coffee boy to go down on her, because the only thing she got that's itchier than her trigger finger is her four alarm fire red pussy. She's goofy in her head, alright. She's just not goofy in a normal way, because nobody ever taught her how to act like a broad, just how to act like a mask, and she's a fuckin' brain and her father's the Joker and her mother, rest her soul, was the best witch in Brooklyn. You're outta touch, Doc. Things are different for the rest of us mere mortals in the real world."

"I admit, that might be the case. But I do love Laurie. And I want what's best for her."

"So do I. What you wanna do is talk to her about alla this goofy shit goin' on in her mind. And fuckin' thank Christ she ain't crazy like her good buddy Liv Napier is. You tell her she's gotta stay home, an' finish school. You tell her she ain't goin' noplace with you until she's twenty-one fuckin' years old!"

"I certainly will. You know, Comedian, I always thought that Trivelino's problem was that her father, albeit through no fault of his own, left her life for so many years when she was just a girl."

"That and she saw he Ma die, real hard, right in front of her."

"But she doesn't remember that. At least, not consciously. But, my point is, I think that she would benefit from having an older man in her life. Someone who would look after her. Now, and I might add, through no fault of your own, you were only an intermittent father figure in Laurie's life. Maybe if she's with, well, someone like me, she'd be better off."

The Comedian gave him a dirty look.

"Yeah, well, if ya put it that way, it's probably a lot better her bein' with you than some fuckin' little bastard who'd teach her to drink and knock her up."

"I worry about her, working alone. I want her to be safe. You can trust me with your daughter, Comedian."

They were both, all of the sudden, thinking about Liv Napier, sitting at the end of a dive bar, drunk at two in the morning, banged up from the fight she had in the street, eyeing the local talent and trying to decide if she wanted to get some action or start a bar fight.

Staggering home all beat to Hell in the wee hours of the morning, and Bruce Wayne at home, looking at the clock, glad to see that she was just alive and in one piece.

Until the next day, when he'd have to start looking at the clock and wondering when or if his little girl was coming home, again.

Neither one of them wanted to see that happen to Laurie.

"You do know if anything happens to her, even if I hafta get every egghead brainiac on God's Green Earth to figure out how, I'll kill you."

"Understood. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'd better get Trivelino back from her coffee break, and see to it I transport her directly home before she ends up at the bar. She is the one I really worry about."

"You let me worry about that kid. Me and the Bat and Jack."

"Well, maybe you could use some help. Like all you can get."

"Probably."

"I'll take care of the kid." Eddie told Dr. Manhattan.

**III: Eddie and Liv**

Eddie felt his rage ebbing away, as he left the Doc's lab,

Which was bad, because without his rage, he was a grown man, 41 years old, still wrestling with a mistake he made when he was 16.

A mistake that made it nigh onto impossible to protect his own daughter from the fate that befell his friend's daughter, so that he had to rely on another man to keep her safe.

Not to mention that all there was between him and Sally was a few stolen nights a few months out of the year.

She'd never let him get close enough to really be a man to her, either.

To live with her, to keep her safe, to have something like a normal life.

After everything he'd done, for his family, for his country, for New York City, didn't he deserve to have something like a normal life.

But his daughter wasn't his, the only woman he could ever have imagined having as a wife, the only woman he ever really loved, she wasn't his, either.

Forty one years old, and as a man, what have I got to show for my life?

Jack shit.

"Jesus, Mr. Blake, you look like I feel. You alright?"

The kid appeared at his elbow.

"Did you fuckin' know that Laurie's been takin' rides on the big blue pony?' he demanded, dredging up some residual anger.

Liv's jaw dropped.

"Fuckin' hell! Laurie and the Doc? You gotta be kiddin' me! No. She didn't tell me shit. Is it, yunno, serious."

"Yeah. They're in love."

Liv laughed, derisively.

"And ain't love grand. For some people. For others, it's just another fuckin' kick in the teeth." She observed.

Eddie had noplace to go, no one to see.

Sure he could have gone to Sal's, but right now that would hurt like a kick in the teeth. And he had any number of broads he'd got out of jams that left their windows open at night for his secong story fire escape back door man routine. Not to mention there was no shortage of women who were crazy over guys in masks, he was a change in his costume away from his pick of broads, and not all of them crazy mask groupies.

But Eddie felt desperate, and he felt low, and he just wanted to spend a little time with somebody who gave a fuck whether Edward Morgan Blake lived or died, and fuck the costume.

Liv hadn't gone anywhere, she lit a cigarette.

"Hey, kid, you wanna go to a movie, or somethin'? I mean, you better keep your hands off my cock, but, yunno, I mean, do ya?"

Her little face shone so bright with her thousand watt smile that even with the shiner she looked good.

"Do I? Shit, that would be great! Tonight's my night off, yunno. Ya think we could go to Grossmann's first? I'm starvin'. An' I promise, I won't make any unwanted attempts on the whitened citadel of your virtue, Mr, Blake."

"You're funny, kid. C'mon. Let's get the fuck outa this dump, it's depressing as Hell."

**III: Laurie**

"Liv, I'll never understand you. Don't you believe in love?"

Liv laughed, harshly, and took another drink and another drag on her cigarette.

"Yeah, love. Right. Sure. Not the kind you do. Like on a fuckin' Bee Gees record. That shit's for suckers. Saps. Morons. It's sentimental bullshit. Bullshit they tell you how ain't love grand. Sure. Sometimes, But sometimes it ain't. You know what love is, Lar? It's all consuming. Insectile. It eats you up from the guts out, an' leaves you a big empty hole, full of scars an' fire."

Liv took another drink, and put the bottle back in the glove compartment.

Laurie was slightly taken aback.

Most of the time, Liv was full of macho bravado and everything was a big laugh, but when she got in her philosophical moods, like now, that's' when you got to know what she was really thinking.

And Laurie was thinking that Liv seemed to share the same opinion about love that her mother did.

But, Laurie knew her mother got soured on love, forever, because that son of a bitch Eddie Blake tried to rape her, and it fucked her up so badly, she never could manage to love anyone but him.

Sick, twisted, wrong.

"Jesus, Liv, what kind of love is that?"

Liv smiled, grimly.

"Worst kind. But it's all I've got, Lar. My love's the only thing in me that's good a decent and pure, aside from my blood an' my honor. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Even if it kills me."

Laurie shook her head.

"I have no fuckin' idea what you're talking about. What, are you saying you're in love with whiskey and bar fights and car crashes and screwing complete strangers? Because that will kill you, someday."

"Hey, at least I'm my own woman."

"No, you're anybody's woman who's mean enough to remind you of that son of a bitch Eddie Blake."

"Ya know what? Fuck you."

She laughed, but Laurie could tell she'd hit a nerve.

Later, she was talking to her mother about the conversation she'd had with Liv.

Sally just shook her head.

"Laurie, I want you to try and understand something. I love Eddie. I don't know why. And I know you think that the reason, if I loved him, that I never married him was because I couldn't forgive him for what he did to me. But I forgave him for the trophy room a long time ago. The reason I only see Eddie two or three days a week with sometimes as much as six months inbetween is because I can't love him enough. I love Eddie in spite of himself; I love what's good in him. But the bad side of him, the violent, amoral, brutal side of him, his rages and his bloodlust and his fury; it scares me. He comes by it honestly, and I don't think Eddie's a bad man, but I could never live with someone who's capable of the kinds of things Eddie is. I love him as much as I can love him, but I can never love him to accept him the way he is, and say, well, that's alright. Because, like any sane person, there's a part of me that fears him. Do you understand?"

Laurie took another drag on her cigarette and thought about it.

"I don't know, Ma. I understand what you're saying, but I still don't see how anyone could love a man like that, at all."

"Then this part is going to be even harder for you to understand. Your friend Liv, brawling, swaggering, mean as a snake, macho Liv, who won't ever settle down with one man as long as she lives, no matter who ends up being the rooster in the henhouse, she's truly, madly, deeply in love with Eddie Blake."

"What? Ma, that's ridiculous! I mean, I know she has, like, a thing for him, but that's just Liv. Her and her dirty superhero magazines and books and comics. It's like, yunno, her hobby."

"This goes way beyond Liv and her compulsive sex life. She loves Eddie. I can tell by the way she looks at him. And she loves him the way I never could. Completely. I love him in spite of the fact that he's a crazy, violent wild man, and she loves him because he is. And she has since she was about 13 years old. They put people in nut houses for feeling about other people the way Liv feels about Eddie. And now that she's older, I can see it coming out in Eddie, too. He's drawn to her like a moth flying into a lighted candle. When they collide, it isn't going to be pretty."

"You know, Ma, you don't sound too upset."

"I'm not, Laurie. The last five years with Eddie, they've been good and bad, but despite what he thinks, they haven't been what either of us want, or need. Especially not Eddie. He's a good man, in his way. And Liv's a good girl, she's just troubled. They need each other. Liv needs someone to guide her through the rest of her teenage years, show her the ropes, keep her out of trouble. Someone she respects and trusts, someone who does the same kind of street work she does, in the same way. And Eddie's given his whole life to other people, since he was a boy, without getting much in return. He deserves to have a woman who can really be his woman, someone who loves him without fearing him. Someone who understands him. Someone to make the second act of his life easier than the first. And I deserve to have a life of my own. I'm not saying I don't want Eddie to be part of it. But I can't be his woman. I'm not crazy enough. I'm not strong enough. That's all."

Laurie lit another cigarette.

"How the fuck could you, or Liv, or anybody, for that matter, be in love with a guy like Eddie Blake?"

"How could you be in love with a guy like Jon Ostermann? He may not even be completely human." Sally replied.

Laurie suddenly got her mother's point.

"Okay, Ma. I get it. It's been a long day. I'm goin' to bed."

**IV: Sally**

Sally wanted to tell Laurie that she didn't get it.

She wanted to say that for all his flaws, at least Eddie was still just a man, and he saw the world the way other men saw it and lived in it the way other men lived in it, as mortals, subject to cold and heat and passion and pain.

By those standards, the loftiest of masks with the craziest range of powers, even the virtually indestructible Superman and Wolverine were just men.

But Dr. Manhattan transcended what it was to be human or even she supposed, Kryptonian.

He didn't live in any place or any time, and he'd be just as fine and dandy on the moon or the North Pole or two miles under the ocean or at the beginning of time as he was having coffee in his lab while he went over his notes.

Then, there was the thing that disturbed her the most.

You could say a lot of bad things about Eddie Blake, and he had done a lot of bad things, but one thing about Eddie, he didn't, perhaps couldn't kill in cold blood. Sure, he had enough rage in him that he could go from laughing to homicidal without wiping the smile off of his face, but Eddie wasn't a murderer or an assassin; he wasn't going to kill without passion or reason

With Eddie, it always had to be personal.

Even his most cold-blooded act, the assassination of President Kennedy, had deeply personal roots.

She'd asked him about it, one drunken night, and Eddie surprised her by admitting to her that he was the man behind the grassy knoll.

She was about to yell at him for having become a puppet for the right wing when he followed up his confession by saying that "they" could have got ten or twenty different guys for the job, but as soon as Eddie heard the murmurs in the grapevine, he volunteered for the task.

"I hated that sunnuvabitch Jack Kennedy. He was a fuckin' hypocrite. Smilin' an' waving, actin' like he was this athletic All-American Boy, with his perfect family. Bullshit. It was all fuckin' bullshit. The guy was fuckin' sicklier than most guys three times his age, and all he did was chase tail. An you know, his fuckin' father, that Joe Kennedy cocksucker, he was a fuckin' bootleggin' Mick gangster motherfucker, he wasn't many rungs higher up the ladder than my old man, an' you know Jack usedta put on the dog with me? He fuckin' called me a shanty Irish thug, right to my face, more'n once, and it wasn't just the booze talkin'. That guy treated me like a fuckin' dog, like I was his on-call pimp, drinkin' buddy an' all-purpose gofer. An' you shoulda seen the way he treated them broads. Jesus. I mean, it was like a revolvin' fuckin' door. An' he was a shitty fuckin' chief executive. His fuckin' mobbed up cocksucker father bought him that election with all his greaseball buddies, and once Jack got in the Oval Office, all he knew how to do was turn it into a fuckin' photo opportunity by day an' a whorehouse at night. Not that fuckin' Bull Johnson is any FDR, but at least you get what you see with him, and the man fuckin' recognises that I'm an important fuckin' guy in the US government, not his personal whoremaster. You don't understand. I did Jack Kennedy's wife, and this country a big fuckin' favor. There's one shanty Irish bastard who won't be pullin' his lace curtain routine on me, ever again."

So, Eddie thought the president should have been assassinated because, in his capacity working in the intelligence community he thought that JFK was some kind of threat to national security, but he carried the job out himself because he hated the man, personally.

And Dr. Manhattan?

He could vaporise people with a wave of his hand; turn them into a bloody jelly with the odd bone sticking out of it, without even thinking twice.

Laurie thought that Sally was crazy and that Liv Napier was crazier because they were both in love with a man who was a monster.

But, Sally realised, that she, and probably Liv, and Eddie too, they thought Laurie was crazy because she was in love with a man who quite possibly wasn't anything at all.

_(Author's Note: Well, it looks like Sally's really going to try to make a break for it. And Laurie's going to ride off into the sunset with Dr. Manhattan. And Eddie? Well, he gets to be the bad guy again. But, there's always the bad girl. Isn't it about time Eddie got the girl, instead of the shoe? And you and I both know that no matter where Sally goes, or what she tells herself, she's not going to get rid of Eddie that easily. And nor does she wish to. And, as nobly as she might seek to let someone else bask in the full sunshine of Eddie's love, should it come to pass, will she be as glad as she thinks to see him ride off into the sunset with someone else. Be careful, Sally. You can't eat your cake, and have it too.)_


End file.
